Top Actors Cut From Big Movies

Bloated running times, terrible performances, a 60-pound weight gain—there are a host of reasons why even the most well-known actors are sometimes cut from films. The Huffington Post takes a look at 11 notable instances of big names getting axed from big movies:

• Ryan Gosling, The Lovely Bones: Gosling thought his character should be big, so he gained a lot of weight and showed up to filming weighing 210 pounds. Unfortunately, the filmmakers, who cast him at 150 pounds, disagreed and fired him.

• James Gandolfini, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close: Gandolfini was supposed to be a love interest for Sandra Bullock's character, but test audiences hated his scenes.
• Mickey Rourke, Billy Bob Thornton, Gary Oldman, Viggo Mortensen, and Martin Sheen, The Thin Red Line: That's a whole lot of star power to get left on the editing room floor, but that's what happened with this Terrence Malick film. At least Rourke ended up in the Blu-ray's deleted scenes.
• Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler, Anchorman: The rambling Will Ferrell classic simply had too much footage, so Rudolph's and Poehler's scenes were edited out. Don't feel too badly for them, though, as director Adam McKay was able to put them in a second film with the leftovers, Wake Up, Ron Burgundy.

Click for the full list, including one film the Huffington Post calls "a hilarious Hollywood mess." (More Ryan Gosling stories.)