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Brad Pitt Took Prime Role From George Clooney Playing Opposite Geena Davis In ‘Thelma & Louise’ [Videos]

By Anne Sewell
Published on: 01:23 PST, Jun 17, 2016

While these days Brad Pitt and George Clooney are mostly good friends – with the odd prank going on – back in the day Clooney once told Geena Davis he hated Brad for stealing a role he really wanted.

Between the two of them, Brad and George have done pretty well over the years, including making some great movies together, like the Ocean’s capers. Both men have also aged incredibly well and some female fans find them even more attractive now than in days gone by.

However, long before Pitt got famous in several great movies, including, but not limited to, 12 Monkeys, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and World War Z, it turns out both actors got to try out for a great role in Ridley Scott’s classic Thelma & Louise, where he played opposite Geena Davis.

It was apparently Pitt’s looks and charisma that helped him get the part of the handsome thief J.D. in Thelma & Louise, but the fact that he did was really upsetting to George Clooney, who really wanted the part.

The story came out recently when Davis appeared on The Late Late Show with James Corden.

In the interview she told the tale of how Clooney reacted to the loss of the role. She explained they had narrowed it down to five young guys, “all cute,” and four were brunettes and then there was Brad.

While reading with Pitt, Geena reportedly kept forgetting her lines as she could hardly stop staring at him, and was happy when he finally got the role. She didn’t, back in those days, remember the names of the other four brunette guys.

She said she was sitting opposite George on a flight some years later and at one point, he turned to her and said, “I hate that Brad Pitt.”

Geena said, “And I say, ‘No, you don’t. He’s your good friend, right?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I hate him because he got the part in Thelma & Louise.’ And I said, ‘Did you want that part?’ And he said, ‘Couldn’t you tell when I read with you?’ ”

At that point it became obvious that Geena had absolutely no recollection of reading with George for the role. All she could remember was Brad Pitt. However, she told Corden she managed to hide that fact from George.

Of course, looking back, Thelma & Louise would have been in casting around 1989 or 1990, at a time when Brad was looking young and totally gorgeous. Have a look at the brief extract from the film below. He somehow even made it look sexy to hold a hair drier as a gun.

Clooney, for his part, was mainly a TV actor, whose greatest claim to fame at that point was playing Matt Stevens in the movie Return of the Killer Tomatoes.

As pointed out by Cinemablend, he had also appeared on The Facts of Life, and was getting the wrong kind of attention on the sitcom Roseanne, where he played the role of Roseanne Barr’s supervisor, Booker. As can be seen below, he did have an incredibly cute butt and all the ladies noticed.

Brad, on the other hand, was landing all kinds of interesting roles in movies like Cutting Class and Too Young to Die.

While George hadn’t yet become a superstar back then, and it was a shame he didn’t get the role in Thelma & Louise, he has of course done just fine.

[Photos by Getty Images/Stringer/Hulton Archive and Brenda Chase/Getty Images/Hulton Archive]

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