Josh Brolin Says Heath Ledger Was Originally Supposed To Star in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
The Coen Brothers’ crazy film No Country For Old Men helped give Josh Brolin’s career a big boost in landing bigger and better roles. But, the part wasn’t originally his for the taking. Nope, he was hired to star in the movie after Heath Ledger dropped out. Ledger was Joel and Etan Coen’s first choice.
Brolin revealed this bit of information during an interview on Dax Shepard's podcast Armchair Expert, saying: "I know they were really frustrated and they were looking everywhere. I don't know if you knew this, but Heath Ledger was supposed to do that role. It wasn't that he died, he pulled out of the role. He was like, 'I don't want to work right now.'"
At the time the role was offered to Ledger, he had just become a new dad and he was having career fatigue. He just wasn’t feeling up to taking on such a rough and heavy role in the dark crime thriller.
The story was set in rural Texas, and followed welder and hunter Llewelyn Moss (Brolin) as he “discovers the remains of several drug runners who have all killed each other in an exchange gone violently wrong. Rather than report the discovery to the police, Moss decides to simply take the two million dollars present for himself. This puts the psychopathic killer, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), on his trail as he dispassionately murders nearly every rival, bystander and even employer in his pursuit of his quarry and the money. As Moss desperately attempts to keep one step ahead, the blood from this hunt begins to flow behind him with relentlessly growing intensity as Chigurh closes in. Meanwhile, the laconic Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) blithely oversees the investigation even as he struggles to face the sheer enormity of the crimes he is attempting to thwart.”
Brolin was freakin’ great in the role of Llewelyn Moss, but I think Ledger would have given an awesome performance as well.