The original ending of Pretty Woman was shockingly different
Unfaithful actress, Diane Lane, who auditioned for Julia Roberts’ loveable call girl part in Pretty Woman, has revealed how different the famous romantic comedy could have turned out.
She told host James Cordon on The Late Late Show that when she was asked to audition for the role of Vivian Ward the movie was a psychotic thriller called 3000. It was a dark tale of a psychotic prostitute with no fairy tale ending.
“It was called 3000 — her fee for the weekend,” Lane says, before revealing the shocking ending: “At the end of the film, she gets kicked out of a rolling limousine and into the street.”
However, when the script changed hands and got to Disney director Gary Marshall, he did a number of rewrites.
“My vision was a combination of fairy tales. Julia was Rapunzel, Richard was Prince Charming and Hector [Elizondo] was the fairy godmother. It didn’t seem like a vision everybody would have, but I did,” he told Vanity Fair.
Interestingly, Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer also were auditioned for the lead roles.
“It would definitely have been a different movie if had it been Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer,” Marhshall adds. “It might have been closer to the original script and maybe not have had a happy ending. But the chemistry between Julia and Richard, it is palpable on the screen, it was palpable in auditions. You can’t really see how it could end any other way, because they just light up with each other.”
So it seems in the end it was the sizzling chemistry between Roberts and Gere that forced a change of the script to create one of the most loved rom-coms of all time.
“The chemistry between Roberts and Gere was perfect. The actors brought such a lovability and charm that I didn’t think the audience would want a dark ending, and it didn’t hurt that I am from the school of happy endings,” he said.
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