After purchasing the rights to make a Superman film in late 1974, father and son producer team Alexander and Ilya Salkind and their partner, Pierre Spengler, spent more than two years looking for an actor to play the title role. Ultimately they went with Christopher Reeve; however, they debated a long list of famous and not-yet-famous actors before landing on him. The following is a list of fifteen actors who were offered the role by the producers, along with what each actor was best known for at the time.
1 Charles Bronson (Death Wish; Dirty Dozen; The Magnificent Seven; The Great Escape)
2 James Caan (The Godfather)
3 Ryan O’Neal (Love Story; Paper Moon)
4 Sam Elliott (Mission: Impossible)
5 Perry King (The Lords of Flatbush)
6 Jeff Bridges (The Last Picture Show; Thunderbolt and Lightfoot; King Kong)
7 Jan-Michael Vincent (The Undefeated; Buster and Billie)
8 David Soul (Starsky and Hutch)
9 Robert Wagner (The Towering Inferno; The Pink Panther; It Takes a Thief)
10 Lyle Waggoner (The Carol Burnett Show; Wonder Woman)
11 Kris Kristofferson (A Star Is Born; Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore)
12 Nick Nolte (Rich Man, Poor Man)
13 David Wayne (The Green Berets; The Rounders) (backed out when his father, John Wayne, was diagnosed with cancer)
14 Robert Redford (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; The Sting) (Redford politely declined in a letter, stating, “Look, I don’t think people are going to believe me flying. It’s not going to work.”)
15 Jon Voight (Midnight Cowboy; Deliverance; Coming Home) (Voight signed on to be the backup if no one else was cast in time)
And the surprising “actor”?:
Bruce Jenner. After winning the gold medal in the decathlon at the 1976 Summer Olympics, few people in the world were more famous than Bruce Jenner (a.k.a. the dad in the reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians). His fame was great enough that the desperate Superman producers actually gave the athlete a screen test in September 1976. Suffice it to say, Bruce’s athletic skills were far greater than his acting ones.