Steven Spielberg probably didn’t realize it at the time, but he dodged a bullet when he rejected the idea of casting Mel Gibson to star in his Oscar-winning 1993 film “Schindler’s List.”
Turning down Gibson wouldn’t have been easy, even for Spielberg. In the early 1990s, Gibson was a major star, coming off the box office success of his first three “Lethal Weapon” movies and with plans to soon direct his Oscar-winning film “Braveheart.”
“Mel Gibson’s name came up” for the role of Oskar Schindler, according to CAA co-founder Michael Ovitz. Schindler was the real-life German businessman who saved more than 1,200 Jews from the Nazis during World War II.
Steven Spielberg (L) directs “Schindler’s List” starring Liam Neeson (R).
Gibson “was interested” in the role and in working with Spielberg, Ovitz told The Hollywood Reporter for a retrospective on the film’s 30th anniversary. “His agent put him forward.”
It’s possible that Gibson might have done a fine job playing Schindler. However, hindsight shows that the film’s legacy could been badly tarnished. In subsequent decades, Gibson became known for exhibiting a propensity for anti-semitic comments, starting with his 2006 DUI arrest. He was recorded yelling at the arresting officer, “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world!”
In a 2020 essay for The Atlantic, actor Joshua Malina asked why Gibson still continued to get hired to act or direct movies in Hollywood. “Gibson is a well-known Jew-hater (anti-Semite is too mild),” Malina wrote. “His prejudices are well documented.”
It’s not known whether Spielberg was aware of Gibson’s alleged prejudices when he was casting “Schindler’s List.” But his main reason for rejecting Gibson was because he wasn’t interested in putting well-known American movie stars in his harrowing Holocaust drama, concerned that their fame could distract from the story.
“It wasn’t going to happen,” Ovitz said. “Steven wanted a non-movie star for the part.”
Irish actor Liam Neeson, then relatively unknown, got the part of Schindler, while British actor Ralph Fiennes also broke out as a star and won an Academy Award supporting actor nomination for playing the sadistic commandant of the Nazi labor camp portrayed in the film.
In The Hollywood Reporter retrospective, Neeson said that other stars considered for the title role included Harrison Ford and Kevin Costner. Spielberg acknowledged that “a lot of people were interested in playing Schindler, and a lot of them were movie stars.”
Ben Kingsley and Liam Neeson in “Schindler’s List.” (Universal Pictures)
But the legendary director said he promised to “never to divulge any of their history with me.” Spielberg also explained how “Schindler’s List” was his first “adult” film after he had become mostly known for making popular summer films, such as “Jaws,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Indiana Jones” and “E.T.” The director said also he was “terrified” about portraying the true story of a Holocaust hero. “Emotionally, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done as a filmmaker,” Spielberg said.
After “Schindler’s List” was released, critics lauded it as Spielberg’s masterpiece. The film won best picture and Spielberg won best director at the 1994 Academy Awards. When accepting the best picture award, Spielberg urged people to listen to the stories of Holocaust survivors and for the Holocaust to be taught in public schools.
Meanwhile, Gibson won his own best director award for “Braveheart,” and he would make news by directing the controversial biblical epic, “The Passion of the Christ,” in 2004, which was criticized for its graphic violence, even as it was a box-office hit, earning nearly $1 billion globally.
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But Gibson’s public image suffered after his drunken antisemitic tirade during his 2006 DUI arrest. Things got worse for Gibson’s reputation after he was recorded using racial slurs and making threatening statements during a fight with his ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva. After Grigorieva accused Gibson of domestic violence, he pleaded no contest in 2011 to a misdemeanor battery charge.
Gibson denied being antisemitic in a 2016 interview with Variety. “I’ve never discriminated against anyone or done anything that sort of supports that reputation,” Gibson said. He also decried the way he had been demonized for his DUI tirade. He said, “For one episode in the back of a police car on eight double tequilas to sort of dictate all the work, life’s work and beliefs and everything else that I have and maintain for my life is really unfair.”
But other tales have circulated in Hollywood that feed critics’ negative characterization of him. As Indiewire reported, screenwriter Joe Eszterhas accused Gibson of antisemitism while they were developing a film together in 2012. In 2020, Winona Ryder spoke about the time in the 1990s when, she recalls, Gibson made antisemitic and homophobic comments in her presence at a Hollywood party, calling her an “oven-dodger,” a reference to the Holocaust, Variety reported.
While Gibson aggressively denied ever saying such a thing to Ryder, Variety reported that it wasn’t the first time Ryder had shared the story and reminded the public of the actor’s “history of bad behavior.”
Meanwhile, in the THR interview, Spielberg expressed concern about the rise in antisemitism in recent years. “Since 2016, antisemitism has joined racism, xenophobia, homophobia and all these maladies and cultural afflictions in the air at eye level,” Spielberg said. He also suggested that the prejudice needs to become “uncomfortable” for people in order for them to “find a solution to the way people treat” Jewish people.