Amanda Seyfried has opened up about her decision to turn down a part in one of Marvel’s most lucrative franchises.
In the 2010s, the Oscar nominee had been in consideration to play the alien Gamora in Guardians Of The Galaxy, but turned it down as she wasn’t convinced by the movie’s commercial appeal.
During a career retrospective interview with the actors’ union Sag-Aftra, Amanda claimed: “Turning down Guardians Of The Galaxy was just so obvious to me at the time.”
She claimed: “[I felt] like, ‘This is not going to be a hit. The tree and the raccoon are talking to each other. And also they’re all in space’. And I was just like, ‘This will ruin my career if this is bad. And there’s a high chance that this could be bad’.”
In the end, Guardians Of The Galaxy was a hit not just with cinemagoers but with critics, with Zoe Saldaña appearing as Gamora in a role that would eventually contribute to her becoming the highest-grossing actor in cinema history.
“Obviously I was wrong,” Amanda conceded. “But I still don’t take back that decision.
“I made it for myself. I made it for my family that I knew I wanted to have. And I just don’t want to spend all the time in the make-up trailer. I just can’t sit still anyway. I really don’t like stunts, and I don’t like heights, and I don’t like pretending the entire world. I need something to hold on to.”
Back in 2020, Amanda told Awards Chatter she was worried that by taking on the role of Gamora, she might end up being a major “part of the first Marvel movie that bombed”.
“I said, ‘Who wants to see a movie about a talking tree and a raccoon?’,” she recalled. “Clearly, I was very wrong.”
Since Guardians Of The Galaxy, Amanda secured her first Oscar nomination for her work in the movie Mank, and won an Emmy for her performance in The Dropout.
The Dropout saw Amanda taking on the role of Elizabeth Holmes, whose story was recently revisited in the critically-lauded documentary You Can See Everything.
