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Back in the 90s, when Cape Fear was getting a revamp under Martin Scorsese’s genius, Ford was ready to join the cast—but with a twist. The man who backed Indiana Jones and Han Solo wanted to join the dark side. Where is the issue? Robert De Niro fought tooth and nail to keep his part as Max Cady.
Ford himself spilled the tea in an interview with The Irish Times: “The only time [playing the bad guy] came up was when Martin Scorsese was doing Cape Fear. He asked Bob De Niro to ask me to play the lawyer, and I told De Niro that the only way I would be interested in doing that film would be if he played the lawyer and I played his role. Of course, he didn’t want to give up his part.”
Ford, when you give it some thought, was the Hollywood equivalent of the nice guy. Whether it was Han Solo, Indiana Jones, Jack Ryan, or anybody else, he was the hero everyone wanted to root for from the late 1970s until the 1990s. Whenever he grinned, you knew he was the one to root for.
By the 1980s, Ford had already dominated the market without even having a major franchise. People wanted to see him only for his name. Blockbusters like Blade Runner, Witness, and Frantic proved he was America’s leading man. But after playing hero after hero, the guy needed something fresh. Enter: the villain itch.
Let’s talk about Cape Fear. The original, from 1962, starred Robert Mitchum as Max Cady, a psycho fresh out of jail and ready to terrorize the family of the lawyer who put him there. Mitchum was scary. He made you shiver just by being in the same room as him. Gregory Peck played the good guy—Sam Bowden, the lawyer—and it was a classic good vs. evil showdown. Peck’s performance even made him cinema’s greatest hero, according to the American Film Institute.
So, when Scorsese decided to reboot the thriller in the ’90s, he had De Niro all lined up for the role of Cady, a no-brainer given their past collaborations in flicks like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. But the question remained—who would play the goody-two-shoes lawyer, Sam Bowden? Enter Harrison Ford.
Scorsese and De Niro reached out to Ford to play Bowden, expecting him to sign on as the good guy, like always. But Ford? He was like, nah, let’s shake things up. He told De Niro he’d only do the movie if they swapped roles—Ford as Cady, De Niro as Bowden. It was a bold move, and we gotta respect it.
“I told De Niro that the only way I would be interested in doing that film would be if he played the lawyer and I played his role,” Ford said. But De Niro, being De Niro, was not about to hand over his juicy villain role. And just like that, Ford’s dream of going full dark side fizzled out.
Can we really blame De Niro, though? Max Cady was a role made for his dark, intense energy. He transformed into this terrifying, tattooed monster, even going as far as getting his teeth filed down to nail Cady’s grimacing grin. There was no way De Niro was giving that up, and in the end, he absolutely crushed it.
As for Ford, well, we didn’t get to see him go full villain. But he bounced back just fine. He stuck to playing the hero in hits like The Fugitive and Air Force One. Still, it’s fun to imagine just how wild Cape Fear could’ve been with Ford as the menacing villain.
