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  • 2023-01-20 (xsd:date)
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  • Was Robin Williams Considered for the Role of Jack Torrance in 'The Shining'? (en)
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  • Casting the actors is one of the most important facets of making a film, and a subject movie fans never tire of speculating about. It is rumored, for example, that comedian Robin Williams was considered for the lead role of the crazed Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film The Shining, which ultimately starred Jack Nicholson in the role. In January 2023, we were asked by a reader if the claim that Williams was considered and passed up for the role is correct. We learned from the author of a forthcoming book about the making of The Shining that there is no evidence to substantiate the claim. Among the places we found the claim repeated was the user-submitted trivia section of IMDb's entry on The Shining, where it is alleged that Robert DeNiro and Harrison Ford were also considered for the part: It also appears (again unsourced) in The Amazing Book of Movie Trivia (2015) by Jack Goldstein: And the claim is repeated, unsourced, on the website ScreenRant, as well: Our search for a reliable source eventually took us to the official @StanleyKubrick Twitter account, which is operated by the estate of the late film director. Although it addresses none of the auxiliary details mentioned above (such as the claim that Kubrick found Williams too psychotic, etc.), a Sept. 5, 2019, tweet from that account states that Williams, Ford, and De Niro were all, at one time or another, considered for the role of Jack Torrance in The Shining: However, film director and Kubrick aficionado Lee Unkrich, co-author of the forthcoming book Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining,' told Snopes via email that the story is simply not true. There are many apocryphal stories about the making of 'The Shining' that have spread online, and this is one of them, said Unkrich, who has had access to both the Kubrick Archive and Warner Bros. archive material related to The Shining. Unkrich said he was able to document via Warner Bros. that Kris Kristofferson was Kubrick's choice of a backup in case a deal couldn't be struck with Nicholson, but there is no record that any of the other actors mentioned above were considered. (en)
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