15 Actors Who Loved A Fictional Character So Much, They Basically Manifested Playing Them
I love watching other people's dreams come true! Oftentimes, the best actor for a role is the one who's been passionate about the character long before an onscreen adaptation was even on the table.
Here are 15 times actors were huge fans of franchises before landing their dream roles:
1.In 2011, Ariana Grande reportedly tweeted, "Loved seeing Wicked again...amazing production! Made me realize again how badly I want 2 play Glinda at some point in my life! #DreamRole." Two years later, she repeated the sentiment in a Kidd Kraddick in the Morning interview.
Here's the full video, with this part starting at the 5:02 mark:
She was officially cast as Glinda in the Wicked movie in 2021.
In a behind-the-scenes video, Ariana said, "I had the incredible privilege of seeing the original Broadway cast when I was 10, and I felt an immediate bond...It's always been the thing that I listen to when I'm nervous, when I'm needing an escape, I need comfort. I went in for my first audition, and I remember being, like, buzzing."
When director Jon M. Chu told her she got the role, she cried and said, "I love her so much. I'm gonna take such good care of her. Thank you so much!"
2.As a kid, Evanna Lynch was such a Harry Potter fan that she wrote letters to the author, asking for a role in the movies.
She first read the books at age 8, and she got so into them that they "took over [her] whole identity."
On a 2021 episode of the Normal Not Normal podcast, she said, "I actually did get into fanfiction, fanfic for a little bit ... Who was I writing about? I was probably writing about Luna ... I was definitely a big part of the community."
When Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out in 2003, then-11-year-old Evanna and her sister Emily planned to camp outside the bookstore to buy the first copy, but on release day, she was in the hospital. However, she got special permission from the hospital and her family to leave for an hour to pick up a signed copy of the book. She went to the local bookstore with a Harry Potter t-shirt, "I love Harry Potter" written on her arms, black glasses drawn on her face, and the words "Harry Potter" and golden snitches painted on her nails in an alternating pattern.
Years later, Evanna, a "professional Luna fan," auditioned against 15,000 other aspiring actors for the role of Luna Lovegood. She debuted in 2007's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Producer David Heyman told the Independent, "The others could play Luna; Evanna Lynch is Luna."
3. In 2021, Rachel Zegler tweeted that she enjoyed reading The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes "so much."
did you read it? i enjoyed it so much.
— rachel zegler (she/her/hers) (@rachelzegler) January 18, 2021
lemme know what you think! i thoroughly enjoyed it. like... didn't want it to end.
— rachel zegler (she/her/hers) (@rachelzegler) January 18, 2021
In 2022, she was cast as Lucy Gray Baird in the film adaptation of the Hunger Games prequel.
When the movie released the following year, she retweeted her old post.
girl get up https://t.co/41Z6rEzXd2
— rachel zegler (she/her/hers) (@rachelzegler) November 20, 2023
4.In 2004, a major studio executive told Ryan Reynolds that his Blade: Trinity character reminded him of Deadpool. So, he sent the actor some comics. Speaking at Talks at Google in 2016, Ryan said, "I’m not a big comic book guy, but I really gravitated toward Deadpool. I fell in love with Deadpool."
His connection to Deadpool seemed fated.
He continued, "The first issue I opened up, I’m not making this up, I was on the panel. Like in the comic, it said Deadpool was saying ‘I look like a cross between Ryan Reynolds and a shar-pei.’ And I was thinking, 'Jesus, this is fucking destiny.'”
The issue he first read was 2004's Cable and Deadpool #2 by Fabian Nicieza and Mark Brooks.
He first played Deadpool in 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Along with his cowriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, Ryan spent years trying to get a Deadpool solo movie made, but Fox kept rejecting the idea. Then, in 2014, a leaked test reel went incredibly viral, and the movie was finally greenlit.
In 2017, Ryan told Variety, "When the leaked footage got around the internet, it created this enormous groundswell. I credit Twitter users, Facebook users, and Instagram users for getting this movie made."
He also said that he "would love to play Deadpool for as long as they would let [him] play Deadpool."
5.A lifelong fan of Gambit, Channing Tatum "was in third grade, throwing playing cards at [his] friends in the living room." He came so close to playing the role onscreen so many times, only to be let down at every turn.
In 2014, he told GQ, "[Gambit is] the only superhero I really followed. He was the most real to me: smoking, drinking, women-loving, thief. He just looked cool to me. I've always loved him. And obviously, he's Cajun."
He was first considered for the role for 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand, but then Gambit was written out of the movie.
Then, in 2009, Gambit was added to X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but Channing was unavailable due to a scheduling conflict. So, the role went to Taylor Kitsch.
So, Channing began gunning for a Gambit solo movie. He told GQ, "We're talking about it. I'm proactively sort of going after it. And I feel bad because I really love Taylor Kitsch as an actor and what he did with the part, but you know, you've got the things that you would really love to do and see."
His dream seemed closer than ever when 20th Century Fox tapped him and Reid Carolin, his producing partner, for a Gambit movie. However, their production spent four years in development hell. Unfortunately for Channing, the project died when the studio merged with Disney in 2019.
In 2022, he told Variety, "Once Gambit went away, I was so traumatized. I shut off my Marvel machine. I haven't been able to see any of the movies. I loved that character. It was just too sad. It was like losing a friend because I was so ready to play him."
However, in 2024, he finally got to bring Gambit to life onscreen with a cameo in Deadpool and Wolverine.
6.Growing up, Tom Holland was so obsessed with Spider-Man that he had character bedsheets and more than 30 costumes. In a 2013 red carpet interview, he shared his interest in playing Peter Parker someday.
Watch the full clip below:
In 2015, he was officially cast as Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War then went on to lead a new Spider-Man trilogy.
In 2017, he told Empire, "Peter Parker is a character we see [in the comic books] as a 15-year-old boy and then as a 35-year-old man. So I have an idea of what I'd like to do, and I've pitched it and it's already been taken into the boardroom. It would be really cool if it pans out, because it means I would be Spider-Man for a very long time."
7.While Tom Holland was filming Spider-Man: Homecoming, Sony outfitted his trailer with a PlayStation and games — including Uncharted. He enjoyed it so much that he didn't want to stop playing to get back to set.
Speaking at CES 2022, he said, "My best friend and I, while we were making Spider-Man 1, started playing the Uncharted series. As soon as we started we didn’t stop. I remember them trying to drag me out of my trailer to come back to set, I was like ‘No no no, we’re about to complete this mission, leave me alone!’”
As he fell in love with the game, he and Sony Pictures CEO/chairperson Tom Rothman talked about bringing it to the big screen. In 2022, the Uncharted movie premiered with Tom as Nathan Drake.
8. Simu Liu didn't just dream of playing a superhero — he did everything in his power to make it happen. When he was 22, he made a story bible for the X-Men character Sunfire, but there's never been a live-action version of him. Then, in 2015, he self-funded, wrote, directed, and starred in the short film Crimson Defender vs. The Slightly Racist Family. Three years later, after Marvel announced a Shang-Chi adaptation was in the works, he expressed his interest on Twitter.
OK @Marvel, are we gonna talk or what #ShangChi
— Simu Liu (@SimuLiu) December 3, 2018
In 2021, he told the Washington Post, "I've been manifesting this kind of superhero role for myself for a long time since before that tweet. In my mind, I had been chasing that role my entire life."
When Simu was officially cast as the titular role in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings in 2019, he replied to his year-old tweet.
Well shit.
— Simu Liu (@SimuLiu) July 21, 2019
9.In 2019, Henry Cavill told British GQ, "My first involved experience [with the franchise] was The Witcher 3." At the time, he'd played through the 2015 game — which takes 100 hours — two and a half times.
When he found out it was being adapted into a TV show, he met with creator Lauren Schmidt Hissrich to express his desire to be part of it. Afterwards, he read all of the books in the series the game was based on and "absolutely loved them."
Henry played Geralt of Rivia in Netflix's The Witcher from 2019-2023.
He told British GQ, "I want to do it as true to the lore as possible. For me it was about bringing my love for the character to the show, as a fan – I want to protect it. It would've hurt my heart to hear there was a show that I didn't jump on, [especially] if someone else had a unique and perhaps even brilliant interpretation of Geralt, but one not who I, as a fan, sees."
On set, he was a big proponent of using Geralt's signs (spells) as often as they could "because for [him], the audience must know he can do these things.
He said, "It mattered to me because it's all part of being a Witcher."
10.Growing up, Sam Reid was fascinated with vampires. When Queen of the Damned began production in Australia in 2001, the then-13-year-old was inspired to read Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles series.
In 2022, he told the Sydney Morning Herald, "Lestat’s always held a place in my heart."
He's played Lestat de Lioncourt on AMC's Interview with the Vampire since 2022.
In 2022, he told Sch?n! magazine, "I’m aware of the books, I read them when I was a kid. I revisited them once I was auditioning and preparing for the role. Now I feel like I have read nearly every book of hers — all of the vampire books — I’ve looked at every piece of media including all of the films and I love that 1994 movie. I appreciate Tom Cruise’s performance, I think he’s fantastic as Lestat. It’s a brilliant performance. I’m never trying to touch that, there are moments where I do like to pay a tiny homage to him because I think he’s sort of the original onscreen portrayal of Lestat."
11.David Tennant was a massive Doctor Who fan as a kid. In 2021, he told The Off Camera Show, "I'd spend a lot of time in the back garden, making up stories, making up TV shows — often Doctor Who-based."
He continued, "The iteration of the Doctor that was around when I was young was played by an actor called Tom Baker, and he had a long, multicolored, knitted scarf. My granny knitted me one. So I would put that one and run around the garden... It's in storage right now, but I know where it is."
In 2024, he told the Guardian, "Am I as geeky as the Doctor Who fans? Yes. As a Doctor Who fan myself of old, I can very much plug into that. I don't think I ever got in trouble at school. That is one of those stories that's ended up on Wikipedia. I wrote an essay on Doctor Who, which some unpleasant newspaper found and printed. But I didn't get in trouble for it. I think I got quite a good mark for it."
On Smart TV, he said his favorite Doctors are Tom Baker and Peter Davison.
While working on 2005's Casanova, he told series creator/Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies, "If there’s any little walk-ons in Doctor Who, I’d be very happy to come and wave a tentacle in a suit for a day." However, Russell had bigger plans — he cast David to play the Tenth Doctor from 2005-2010.
On Imagine... Russell T Davies: The Doctor and Me, Russell said, "In my mind, he kind of melded over and became the Doctor quite naturally. There was no audition for him, it was a simple offer."
David met his wife, Georgia Tennant, when she appeared on a 2008 episode called "The Doctor's Daughter." She's the daughter of Peter Davison, the Fifth Doctor.
The couple's son, Ty Tennant, is open to continuing the family tradition of playing the Doctor.
Then, when Russell returned as showrunner in 2023, David returned as the Fourteenth Doctor for the show's 60th anniversary specials.
12.Similarly, Peter Capaldi was a "geeky fan" of Doctor Who as a teenager. He penned letters to the show's production office and collected the casts' autographs. At 14, he tried to become the Official Doctor Who Fan Club's secretary, but he was disappointed when the position had already been filled.
In his 2012 book The Official Doctor Who Fan Club: Volume One, Keith Miller — who ran the fan club – wrote, "[Capaldi] haunted my time running the fan club, as he was quite indignant he wasn't considered for the post."
He also told Starburst magazine, "I was given the fan club to take the strain of dealing with the advent of the super-fans like Peter Capaldi...who wanted a running dialogue with the production team."
And in audio that Keith recorded when he visited the Doctor Who set in 1975, producer Philip Hinchcliffe said, "From our end, we're very keen on fan clubs. We do get feedback from your members. I would think the letters from a lot of the people who know a lot about the program are probably your members, or members of the other fan club – this Peter Capaldi, and people like that."
In 1976, Peter wrote an article for the fanzine Doctor Who News.
He also visited the Doctor Who set and met several of the actors when he was 17.
In 1995, he was offered an audition for the role of the Doctor in a TV reboot movie. In 2014, he told Entertainment Weekly, "I didn’t go. I loved the show so much, and I didn’t think I would get it, and I didn’t want to just be part of a big cull of actors."
Peter played two minor roles in the extended Doctor Who universe — Caecilius in the 2008 episode "The Fires of Pompeii" and John Frobisher on a 2009 episode of Torchwood. Finally, from 2013-2017, he played the Twelfth Doctor.
He told Entertainment Weekly, "Of course, there's a lot of people, prop guys, very kindly telling you how to work the TARDIS. But I thought, 'I know how to work the TARDIS, you don't have to tell me how to work the TARDIS.'"
13.As a kid, Michelle Pfeiffer was "completely obsessed with Catwoman."
In 2017, she told The Hollywood Reporter, "When I heard that Tim [Burton] was making [Batman Returns] and Catwoman had already been cast, I was devastated."
Originally, Annette Bening was cast in the role, but she left the film when she became pregnant. Michelle replaced her, and as she told THR, "The rest is history."
"I remember telling Tim halfway through the script that I'd do the film. That's how excited I was," she said.
14.Beanie Feldstein's third birthday was Funny Girl themed. She dressed up as Fanny Price, the iconic performer whose life story was adapted into the Barbra Streisand-led Broadway musical and film.
In 2021, she was cast as Fanny Brice in the Funny Girl revival — the first time the show had played on Broadway since 1964.
She told The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, "I feel like I should teach a class on manifesting, but I don't know what I did. I wouldn't know what to teach."
15.And finally, Beanie isn't the only actor who dreamed of playing Fanny Brice. On Glee, Lea Michele's character, Rachel Berry, covered songs from the musical and eventually starred in a Broadway revival. Lea herself was eager to star in a real-life revival (especially when Glee creator Ryan Murphy held the Broadway rights), which she shared on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen in 2017.
Here's the clip:
After Beanie stepped down from the role following production's decision to take the show in a different direction in 2022, Lea was cast as Fanny Brice.
