Corey Feldman may have missed out on a career-changing movie role—and he’s placing the blame on Johnny Depp.
The 53-year-old actor spoke about the incident in a March 26 episode of The Magnificent Others With Billy Corgan podcast, revealing he had been cast in the 1993 drama What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.
Feldman said he had secured the role of Arnold “Arnie” Grape, the younger brother of the film’s title character portrayed by Depp.
“I never saw the film because I’m still bitter,” Feldman admitted. “Bitter leaf in that one. But yes, I was originally cast for that role.”
The Goonies actor said he was one of the first actors to be hired for the film but was pushed out shortly after Depp joined the cast.
“Johnny Depp … was cast after I was and apparently whispered into the producers’ ear that he wasn’t fond of me,” Feldman recalled. “He said I was a junkie and that he didn’t work with junkies. This is the first time I’m ever telling this story, so I’m sure I’m gonna get hung by this one.”
Feldman has been quite open about his struggles with drug addiction and his multiple stints in rehab; however, the actor insisted he was drug-free before being fired from the film.
“I had just gotten out of rehab. I had turned my life around,” he said. “In fact, was trying to help River [Phoenix] at the time, who [Depp] was running with at the time, as we all know.”
Phoenix was Feldman’s co-star in the 1986 film Stand by Me. In 1993, Phoenix died of a drug overdose outside of The Viper Room, a Los Angeles nightclub that Depp previously co-owned.
“As you can imagine, there was a bit of a thorn in the side on that one,” Feldman continued. “And, had I not been pushed out and done that role, who knows what would have happened from that point forward … There was a bitter tea there, but that said, you don’t hang on those, you get past ‘em.”
Leonardo DiCaprio ultimately took on the Arnie role, and his performance earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. But that wasn’t the only big job Feldman lost to DiCaprio.
“Ironically, just a couple years later, I also was up for Titanic,” Feldman said. “So there was kind of a double banger with Leo. But that was OK, because that one I wasn’t as close. I was up for it, I read for it, I know that I was in the contention somewhere.”