From tanking the films to missing out on the opportunity for big bucks and more critical acclaim, it really could go either way. So we've taken a look at the most memorable examples of an actor deciding against returning, why they walked away, and how that worked out for everyone involved.
1. Richard Dreyfuss – Jaws 2 (1978)
Leading man Roy Scheider signed on regardless, but his character’s right-hand man, and source of so much of the original’s charm, Richard Dreyfuss, did not. In 2014, Dreyfuss told The Hollywood Reporter that he didn’t make Jaws 2 because Spielberg wasn’t attached, saying, "I knew what made Jaws good," adding that his dissatisfaction with his fee on the original contributed to his decision to turn down the sequel. "You would be embarrassed at how much they paid us," he griped.
Although Jaws 2 was a nightmare to make and expensive to produce, it was a box office hit, eventually raking in more than $200 million. However, reviewers this time were less than impressed, with Roger Ebert describing it as "pure trash". It’s doubtful that Dreyfuss regretted his decision to duck out, as him and Spielberg had instead reunited for 1977’s phenomenally successful, critically acclaimed Close Encounters, while a year later the actor would pick up the Academy Award for best actor for his performance in The Goodbye Girl.
2. Marlon Brando – The Godfather Part II (1974)
However, the original plan was that Brando would return for a single scene, a 1940s flashback featuring Vito surrounded by his family. As producer Fred Roos describes in Peter Cowie’s The Godfather Book, negotiations were difficult, because Brando had unresolved issues with Paramount regarding the deal he was forced to take on the first film.
The triumphs of his small but lucrative role in Superman (1978) and his seminal (also lucrative) supporting turn in Apocalypse Now (1979) were still to come for Brando, but he struggled to maintain his movie star status, and only intermittently acted in his later years. The Godfather Part II went on to be a financial success that stands alongside its predecessor as one of the greatest films of all time, with many considering it superior, while it surpassed the original’s Oscar haul, taking home six to its three.
Glover told the filmmakers his reservations about the morality of the ending, which saw the family ending up rich, and told The AV Club in 2012 that, when it came to the sequel, "they didn’t want me in the film". He went on to explain that he was offered $150,000, "less than half of what my fellow actors [Lea Thompson and Tom Wilson] were making, who were coming back for similar-sized roles", but called reports that he had asked for the same salary as Michael J Fox a "total fabrication".
Back to the Future Part II was financially successful, though critically less loved, while the franchise would come to a close a year later with a third film that had been shot back-to-back. Glover turned to indie films in the '90s, before re-entering the mainstream in the Charlie’s Angels series, reuniting with Zemeckis on 2007’s Beowulf.
4. Arnold Schwarzenegger – Predator 2 (1990)
Schwarzenegger was included in the original plans for 1990’s sequel, which took the action from the jungle to an inner-city Los Angeles, plagued by warring drug cartels. Speaking to Collider in 2011, producer John Davis described how Schwarzenegger almost made Predator 2 but "the deal broke down over $250,000". Instead, the script was rewritten and Lethal Weapon’s Danny Glover took the lead, with Schwarzenegger making Total Recall.
More recently, things have headed off in an inspired new direction under the stewardship of director Dan Trachtenberg, with Prey (2022), the animated Predator: Killer of Killers (2025) and Predator: Badlands (2025) being rapturously received. And it’s all been possible without the original, cigar-chomping star.
5. Michael Keaton – Batman Forever (1995)
In a 2017 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Keaton offered a frank, "It sucked," when recalling the script he was shown by Schumacher. "I knew it was in trouble when he said: 'Why does everything have to be so dark?'"
Keaton had some wilderness years after hanging up his cape, but he won acclaim and a Golden Globe by riffing on his Batman days when he took on the role of a washed-up superhero actor in 2014’s Birdman. He would return to the Batman role in 2023’s The Flash.
6. Keanu Reeves – Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997)
Yet when it came to the 1997 sequel – this time set aboard an out-of-control, erm, cruise ship – Keanu wasn’t keen. In an interview with Jimmy Kimmel in 2015 he said, "It was just a situation in life where I got the script and I read the script and I was like: Ahhh!", incredulously telling TV host Graham Norton in 2021, "Now it’s on an ocean liner?"
It might seem like Reeves dodged a bullet – or, in this case, a low-speed cruise ship – by ducking out of Speed 2, which famously bombed at the box office and was roundly ridiculed. The actor’s big film that year was The Devil’s Advocate, which did decent business, while a couple of years later he made The Matrix. However, in an interview with GQ in 2019, Reeves recalls finding himself in "movie jail" after turning down the Speed sequel, noting that he didn’t work with Fox for more than a decade afterwards.
7. Jodie Foster – Hannibal (2001)
Foster and co waited years for Silence of the Lambs author Thomas Harris to deliver the follow-up, but the resulting 1999 book took Starling and serial killer Lecter’s relationship in a deranged new direction. The actress told Variety in 2026 that, after learning that original director Jonathan Demme had opted out of an adaptation based on the source material’s outlandishness, the decision not to sign up was "easy", adding: "Luckily, I was doing something else, so I was able to say, 'Ah! No. I’m shooting something else.'"
Foster would eventually return to the detective genre to great acclaim in HBO series True Detective: Night Country in 2024, winning outstanding lead actress at the Emmys, as well as best actress at the Golden Globes.
8. Linda Hamilton – Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
In late 2000, Hamilton turned down the chance to return to the role in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, telling The Independent on Sunday in 2001 that the script, "didn’t take my character in any new directions", focusing as it did on Sarah’s son John and Arnie’s reprogrammed T-850.
Directed by Jonathan Mostow, Terminator 3 didn’t hit the heights of its predecessors artistically, but it did decent business and was fairly warmly received. It opted to kill Sarah off in Hamilton’s absence, yet this legendary female character and the actress that plays her would return several films down the line in the sixth instalment, 2019’s Terminator: Dark Fate, which directly follows on from the second, ignoring the intervening instalments. Although it flopped at the box office, Dark Fate won praise from some critics for returning to the spirit of the first two films.
The sequel’s path to the screen wasn’t straightforward. Although a follow-up had been mooted back in 2001, it failed to get off the ground. MovieWeb claimed in 2011 that Smith had asked for $50 million to return, with returning director Roland Emmerich informing the New York Daily News two years later that Smith was "too expensive".
Smith has tended to be tight-lipped about his specific reasons for swerving the sequel (the less charismatic Liam Hemsworth replaced him), but the actor told Yahoo Movies in 2015, "It was terrible when I found out my character died." Opting for Suicide Squad was, on balance, the better decision. Both films were panned by critics but, while Resurgence underperformed financially, Suicide Squad was at least a commercial success. Incidentally, Smith didn’t sign up to the sequel to that one either.
10. Neve Campbell – Scream VI (2023)
Scream VI, which featured series stalwart Courteney Cox supporting newer stars Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, went forward without Campbell and was a hit. However, its directors, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, had to bail on 2026 follow-up Scream 7 due to scheduling conflicts, before star Barrera was fired following pro-Palestinian social media posts, with Ortega and new director Christopher Landon exiting soon after. Eventually, the writer of the first two and fourth Scream films, Kevin Williamson, signed on to direct, with Campbell returning to the fore.
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