Delta Burke and John Belushi in ‘The Blue Lagoon’?! Find Out Who Else Was Almost Cast
For generations, Hollywood typically only featured lusty teens in goofball comedies. But soon after Grease director Randal Kleiser scored a box office smash with that teenybopper romp, he decided to create a drama that would explore what might happen if two kids were forced to grow up alone, without parents, curfews or cautionary sex education … and a tropical firestorm ensued.
Released on June 19, 1980, The Blue Lagoon starred buzzy model/actress Brooke Shields and curly-haired newcomer Christopher Atkins in the lushly beautiful, wildly controversial tale of two little-kid cousins, Richard and Emmeline Lestrange, who become stranded on a South Pacific island after they survive a shipwreck at the dawn of the 1900s.
Most critics flipped their lids at the storyline, as well as the sight of the underage actors running around in wisps of white cloth — or nothing at all. Famed movie critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert added it to their “Most Hated” list for the year. But audiences loved The Blue Lagoon, which came in at No. 9 among North America’s highest-grossing movies of 1980, besting such films as The Blues Brothers, Ordinary People, Urban Cowboy and The Shining.
And plenty of young actors vied to dive into The Blue Lagoon.
Shields, then 14 and already the star of the pearl-clutcher movies Pretty Baby and King of the Gypsies, and Atkins, 18, may have played those shipwrecked, lovestruck cousins. But, to celebrate 45 years of The Blue Lagoon, here are some other famous faces who were also considered.
Actresses Who Auditioned for Emmeline
A veritable who’s who of popular teen and 20-something actresses of the time read for the role. Some, like 15-year-old Tatum O’Neal (Paper Moon), 16-year-old Jodie Foster (Taxi Driver), 19-year-old Rosanna Arquette (The Dark Secret of Harvest Home) and 20-year-old Linda Blair (The Exorcist, Born Innocent, Sarah T. — Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic) had already performed major roles in films with very adult themes. In later interviews, Blair said she’d hoped playing Emmeline would help her shake her “child victim” typecasting.
There were newcomers, too. Diane Lane, 14, who’d gained good notices for her debut performance in the 1979 charmer A Little Romance was a frontrunner, but backed out because of required nude scenes (which were later toned down). Another newcomer, Molly Ringwald — who was just 11 at the time and guest-starring on The Facts of Life — reportedly read for the role, too.
Embassy Pictures Corporation/Everett Collection/Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images for TRESemme
The late Kelly Preston told Bravo’s Andy Cohen that she was a 16-year-old high school kid with zero acting experience when Kleiser flew her and her mom to L.A. so she could screen-test opposite then frontrunner and Eight Is Enough heartthrob Willie Aames.
Aames would go on to star in the Lagoon knockoff Paradise (1982) with Phoebe Cates, and Preston said she bowed out when producers asked her to get “an all-over tan.” Her future husband, Grease star John Travolta, was also briefly considered to play Richard.
Speaking of that …
Finding the Right Richard
Preston also told Cohen that The Blue Lagoon producers planned to cast either an established actor to play Richard and an unknown in the role of Emmeline, or vice versa. They held auditions accordingly, which is why Aames and Lane were early frontrunners.
A shaggy-haired Matt Dillon, who stole teenage girls’ hearts as sexy summer camper Randy in the Tatum O’Neal/Kristy McNichol starrer Little Darlings, read for the role. Dillon reportedly turned the film down for its nude scenes, but he set the record straight some years later. “… there were a lot of reasons to turn down The Blue Lagoon. It wasn’t just the nudity,” Dillon told Total Film. “It was kind of a silly movie, you know? Much as I was tempted to go to Tahiti and run around with no clothes on, I had to let that one go.”
Then-newcomers Lou Diamond Phillips (who was paired up with Ringwald), and Sean Penn, who reportedly made it to the final rounds, screen-tested to don young Richard’s loincloths, too.
Universal Pictures/Everett Collection
It’s pretty hard to imagine it, but Saturday Night Live and National Lampoon’s Animal House star John Belushi, then 30, also threw his hat in the ring to play Richard as a way to break his “clown prince” rep. Unsurprisingly, he was still considered too funny for the role. But Belushi got to go “blue” anyway, making the career-defining The Blues Brothers with Dan Aykroyd instead.
Once Shields was a lock as Emmeline, Kleiser and company didn’t want an established teen-dream actor to upstage her.
A part-time model, Atkins was about to head off to study sports medicine at college when his agency sent him to read for The Blue Lagoon. The Rye, New York, native could hardly believe it when he kept getting callbacks. Before Atkins knew it, he was perming his hair, flying off to Fiji and being asked to chastely romance his costar to make the Lestranges’ eyebrow-raising love look endearing.
Our favorite rumors
Though we couldn’t substantiate them, plenty of other Lagoon near-misses have made the internet too. Here are a few of our favorites.
Sarah Jessica Parker and Sylvester Stallone. Hard to imagine TVs Carrie Bradshaw or filmdom’s Rocky Balboa romping in the Fiji sand. But someone apparently thought it might happen.
Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill. Luke, I am your cousin! Fisher outright denied ever considering — or being considered — to play Emmeline. And though the rumors are out there, if Fisher’s Star Wars costar Hamill ever entertained adding shipwrecked beach walker to his resume, you couldn’t prove it by us.
Delta Burke and Christopher Reeve. Yes, Superman and Suzanne Sugarbaker. You don’t need us to tell you that the Somewhere in Time star and Designing Women Emmy nominee were highly unlikely to take a dip in The Blue Lagoon.
Who would you have liked to see cast in The Blue Lagoon? Tell us in the comments below.
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