MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY: “I was offered the lead in Titanic but went with Steven Spielberg’s Amistad. You saw Leonardo DiCaprio instead.”

HALLE BERRY: “I chose to do The Flintstones rather than Speed, which Sandra Bullock said ‘yes’ to.”

WILL SMITH: “I thought The Matrix sounded like computers taking over the world. Yeah, right. So I said ‘no.’  My wife (Jada Pinkett Smith) later said, ‘Yes,’ so she was there and I wasn’t.”

DEBRA WINGER: “I didn’t do Fatal Attraction, so they got Glenn Close. Instead I  took the part of an FBI agent pursuing a serial killer in Black Widow.”

SARAH POLLEY: “I was turned off by the topless scene in Almost Famous, so Kate Hudson got to do it and wound up with an Oscar nomination. I did The Weight of Water with Sean Penn.”

BURT REYNOLDS: “I quit Terms of Endearment and was replaced by Jack Nicholson, who won an Oscar for it. What did I do? Stoker Ace with Jim Nabors.”

—compiled by Susan Granger