Before Heath Ledger’s tragic death in 2008, he was an early front-runner for George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road.

In an excerpt from Kyle Buchanan’s Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road George Miller and members of the production/casting crew discussed the casting process for the 6-time Oscar-winning movie. Some of the names being tossed around have your mind shifting about the Mad Max characters we already have in spectacular and wild ways.

Among the actors mentioned was front-runner Heath Ledger, who Miller discussed having frequent conversations with about the role before his untimely and tragic death. Beyond Ledger were many interesting choices that never ended up panning out for both Max and Furiosa (Charlize Theron) alike.

Ronna Kress (casting director): When I think of all the people who auditioned for that movie! We saw, at the time, what I consider now to be many of the movie stars of our day.

Love Film & TV?

Get the latest Film & TV news, features, updates and giveaways straight to your inbox Learn more

Megan Gale (“The Valkyrie”): I did a workshop in L.A. with Michael Fassbender, who they were considering for Max. He wasn’t as big a star as he is now, but he was on the rise, so it was a wee bit intimidating for me.

Ronna Kress: For Max, we looked at Michael Fassbender, Jeremy Renner, Armie Hammer — and these are the people we didn’t cast. Joel Kinnaman didn’t even have an American agent at the time; he was just out of Scandinavia.

Petrina Hull (production and development executive): There was always a cap of people that thought that Max should be an Australian to take over the reins from Mel. Eric Bana was an Australian actor that was considered. In the general public, there was a big push for Sam Worthington.

Belinda Johns (assistant to George Miller): For a long time, Heath Ledger was in the picture.

George Miller (director): The person who was foremost in my mind was Heath. Every time he’d come through Sydney, he’d pop in and we’d talk generally about things and then we started to talk about Mad Max. We lost him, which was such a pity — not for Mad Max but because he was an exceptional person. He had a very powerful sense of inquiry and was amazingly humble.

Mark Sexton (lead storyboard artist): This is something I don’t hear about very much and that George never admits, but I have a very, very, very strong memory of George talking about Eminem for Max.

Petrina Hull: That is true! See, that’s one of those wild-card things: There were always these people that George would see in popular culture, and he’d want to know more about this person.

George Miller: He’d done 8 Mile, and I found that really interesting — I thought, He’s got that quality. We’d done the first Happy Feet with the late Brittany Murphy, and she had done 8 Mile, so I asked her what he was like and would this be something really interesting for him? She had no reservations about saying what a wonderful talent he is.

Mark Sexton: I got brought back in to redraw a bunch of storyboards in March 2007 and do a bunch of cut-and-pastes to put blond hair on Max.

George Miller: We did get in touch with him, though that’s as far as it went because we were going to shoot it in Australia at that point, and he simply didn’t want to leave home. I think he had the impression that if he could do it out of his home state, then he’d be up for it.

Near the end of the casting process, Miller set up a meeting with a pop icon. “Usually, actors turn up dressed very casually, but boy, Rihanna looked spectacular when she walked in,” Miller told me. “I’m not sure she was even aware of the content of the movie, so she dressed up as Rihanna, which was the right thing to do.”

Get unlimited access to the coverage that shapes our culture.
to Rolling Stone magazine
to Rolling Stone magazine