One of the most talked about blockbusters of 2005 almost had a different leading lady.
Gwen Stefani, who appeared on Thursday’s “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” briefly recalled auditioning for the role of Jane Smith on “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.” Angelina Jolie played the role in the film, which also starred Brad Pitt.
“Angelina hit me,” the Grammy-winning songwriter quipped to a collective gasp from the audience. And while she didn’t reveal any details about the audition, she added, “That could have been a different story.”
Watch Gwen Stefani’s performance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show below.
Directed by Doug Limon, Mr. & Mrs. Smith follows a bored suburban couple whose marriage is in trouble after they discover they are assassins for competing agencies and have been hired to kill each other.
The film was a critical and commercial smash, reportedly grossing $486 million at the box office worldwide. However, its production was a publicity frenzy as it marked the beginning of Pitt’s romance with Jolie while he was still married to actress Jennifer Aniston.
Although Stefani’s unsuccessful “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” Tryout seemed to come as a surprise to most DeGeneres viewers, she’s broached the subject before.
“It was between me and Angelina Jolie, and I was like, ‘Oh, great. I got a chance here,'” she said of the project in a 2008 Vogue interview. “All of this acting really feels like something I could do. Whenever I did it, whenever I had moments where it worked, it was like a performance. You hit a moment. And that’s exactly what films are: a sequence of moments.”
And while Stefani missed the role of Jane Smith, she earned a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination in 2005 for being part of the ensemble cast of Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.