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All the Actors Who Turned Down Brokeback Mountain<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n “I was working on it, and I felt like we needed a really strong cast, like a famous cast,” Van Sant told Indiewire<\/a> in 2018.\u00a0“That wasn\u2019t working out. I asked the usual suspects: Leonardo DiCaprio<\/strong>,\u00a0Brad Pitt<\/strong>,\u00a0Matt Damon<\/strong>,\u00a0Ryan Phillippe<\/strong>. They all said no.”<\/p>\n In hindsight, he wasn’t sure why he was so stuck on casting big stars, concluding he was “not ready” to helm the movie at the time.<\/p>\n “There was something off with myself, I guess,” he said, “whatever was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n Mark Wahlberg<\/strong> later had a meeting with Lee, but told WENN in 2007, per the Advocate<\/a>, that he got “a little creeped out” by the 15 pages of the script that he read.<\/p>\n “I told Ang Lee, ‘I like you, you’re a talented guy, if you want to talk about it more…'” he recalled. “Thankfully, he didn’t…I didn’t rush to see\u00a0Brokeback<\/em>, it’s just not my deal… Obviously, it was done in taste\u2014look how it was received.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n