Can you imagine this? I’ve heard a few times that Will Smith turned down the role of Neo for The Matrix. That would have been really weird with him in it, don’t you think? Get this, he turned down The Matrix so he could take Wild, Wild, West instead.
yeah… i think K.Reeves sucks overall, but it'd have had a totally different feel with Big Willy. But can you blame him? Some dude that hasnt done anything of note comes to him and says "hey, lets do a movie where all of us people are really in a computer program run by machines that took over the world. And those machines run off the energy in our bodies. And then you go see this oracle and you're the one that's gonna save everybody."
Yeah, he said it was pitched to him like, "You'll be living in the world like a normal dude, except it really isn't the real world. The real world's the Matrix, you're really sitting in a tub of goo with a wire plugged into your head. But you get out and go to the real world, but it isn't really the real world, just the world run by computers that everyone thinks is the real world, and you travel through phones…."
He said, "No thanks," and wanted to do something he knew was going to be a hit…Wild, Wild West!
i used to have a man-crush on him until WWW came out.