{"id":130324,"date":"2019-02-16T19:16:13","date_gmt":"2019-02-16T19:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/en\/?p=130324"},"modified":"2025-07-01T22:21:30","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T05:21:30","slug":"will-smith-matrix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/will-smith-matrix\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Smith explains why he refused to star as Neo in ‘The Matrix’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Matrix<\/p>\n

One of the most interesting things a movie fan can do is play “What if?” Some of the most iconic roles in movie history almost went to other actors. Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone auditioned for Han Solo. Nicolas Cage was almost Superman.<\/a>\u00a0Cameron Crowe intended Tom Hanks to play Jerry Maguire.<\/a>\u00a0And in one jaw-dropping scenario, Will Smith was offered Neo in “The Matrix.”<\/p>\n

For the first time, Smith is now sharing the story of why he turned down one of the most important movies of the last 20 years. Watch this video to hear Smith explain his decision.<\/p>\n

But we got this instead:<\/p>\n

Another shocker in Smith’s video: If he had accepted the role, Val Kilmer would have played Morpheus. So maybe everything worked out for the best.<\/p>\n

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Keanu almost wasn’t Neo. Here’s why Will Smith turned down “The Matrix.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9139,"featured_media":130326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015,3150],"tags":[1779,1550,1778,1777,1776],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-130324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uncategorized","tag-keanu-reeves","tag-movies","tag-neo","tag-the-matrix","tag-will-smith"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":326568,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130324\/revisions\/326568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130324"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=130324"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=130324"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=130324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}