17 Roles That Completely Transformed From What An Actor Signed Up For

A script isn't set in stone before production begins. Oftentimes, the plan for a TV show or movie evolves throughout filming. Even the original vision a writer or director had for a character can do a complete 180.

Here are 17 roles that completely transformed from what the actor signed up for:

1.WHAT THE ROLE STARTED AS: Paul Bettany began voicing JARVIS, Tony Stark's AI assistant, in the first Iron Man movie. He didn't watch any of the movies, but he made so much money for so little work that he felt "like a pirate."

He told Digital Spy, "This is robbery. I walk in, I say some lines on a piece of paper for two hours, and then they give me a bag of money and I leave and I go about my day. I sort of feel guilty, because at least acting can be exhausting, with long hours, but I do nothing!"

WHAT THE ROLE BECAME: Like in the comics, JARVIS evolved into Vision in Avengers: Age of Ultron. While filming WandaVision, he found the makeup removal "brutal." However, he loves Vision so much that he's willing to play him forever.

Describing the makeup removal process, he told Digital Spy, "It's harder to get off, and a lot of damage is done from taking it off, which is usually fine if you are working two or three days a week — but your skin gets tattered if you are working six days a week."

He also said that production set up a little sauna to help him steam the makeup off his face.

2.WHAT THE ROLE STARTED AS: In the pilot of her iconic Disney Channel show, which was originally called The Amazing O'Malleys, Selena Gomez played Julia O'Malley. She had a twin brother named Jordan (played by David Henrie), and her family owned a magic shop.

WHAT THE ROLE BECAME: After the pilot, the show was changed to Wizards of Waverly Place. Julia became Alex Russo. Her twin brother became her older brother, Justin, and she was given a younger brother, Max. Additionally, the Russo family now owned a sub shop.

Wizards referenced the original script on an episode where the future version of Harper, Alex's best friend, writes a book about the Russos and names Alex's character Julia.

3.WHAT THE ROLE STARTED AS: On Good Morning, Miss Bliss, Lisa Turtle was supposed to be a Jewish girl from Long Island.

WHAT THE ROLE BECAME: The producers loved Lark Voorhies's audition so much that they rewrote the character to better fit her. She was one of the few cast members who stayed on when the show was retooled as Saved by the Bell.

4.WHAT THE ROLE STARTED AS: On Happy Days, Fonzie was initially "a character who very seldom spoke." He played second fiddle to the leading man, Richie Cunningham.

Writer Michael Warren told the LA Times, "In the Happy Days pilot, the surprise was that toward the end of the pilot, Fonzie spoke."

WHAT THE ROLE BECAME: Fonzie became so popular with audiences, and production noticed young viewers starting to imitate him. The show shifted to make him the main character, and "slowly but surely, as they started to write for [Henry Winkler], it became sorta like Beatlemania for awhile."

Ron Howard, who plays Richie, told The Graham Norton Show, "The executives, studio heads, [and] network heads...started really treating me with a lot of disrespect. ... And the press kept saying, 'What's it like? Do you feel like you've become a second-class citizen on your own show?' ... Which I didn't feel within the workspace, and I certainly didn't feel it within our friendship, which endures to this day."

5.WHAT THE ROLE STARTED AS: On The Golden Girls, Sophia Petrillo was supposed to be an occasional guest star. It was also Estelle Getty's first onscreen role, so she was very nervous and had to combat her stage fright with cue cards and strategically hidden script pages.

WHAT THE ROLE BECAME: Test audiences loved Sophia so much that the network decided to promote her to a series regular. Getty asked if they could make the character Jewish, like her, because she thought it would be easier to play. However, production wanted to keep her Italian, and Getty did such an amazing job in the role that she received more fan mail than her co-stars. She also won an Emmy.

6.WHAT THE ROLE STARTED AS: Allison Williams's Girls character, Marnie Michaels, "would drive [her] crazy if [they] were friends in real life," but the actor learned to "put that out of [her] head in order to play her."

She told BuzzFeed, "Like, sleeping with Elijah is crazy, sleeping with Ray is crazy, furiously hitting on Desi when he mentions his girlfriend in their first conversation is crazy; but I have to be on the couch with her and Elijah hoping they fuck, I have to be in that apartment with Ray kinda wanting it to happen, and I have to support her quest for Desi."

WHAT THE ROLE BECAME: However, the character became more challenging to play. In Season 2, Williams fought against Marnie's decision to sleep with conceptual artist Booth Jonathan because she "thought Marnie was better than that, but she wasn't."

She told BuzzFeed, "I did not want her to go down that road...[but] I had to be OK with it, too. I had to believe Booth was a genius when I walked out of that TV tower; whereas, I, as Allison, couldn't stop thinking, 'It puts the lotion on its skin.'"

7.WHAT THE ROLE STARTED AS: When Martin Sheen joined The West Wing, President Josiah Bartlet was "just a peripheral character — the focus was to be on the staff, not the First Family." In the pilot, he only came in it at the very end, but "the lead-up to the character was so strong, it was so clear what kind of person occupied this office."

He told Empire Online, "When I did the pilot, my contract was for just three years, and it was confined to maybe three or four episodes every season. The only restraint I had was that I could not play another president while the show was on the air."

WHAT THE ROLE BECAME: However, the way Sheen played the president in that one scene "made them realize that they had to have Martin in the show the entire time."

Sheen told Empire Online, "I had to renegotiate a long-term contract after the pilot, and I asked two things: that they make Bartlet a Catholic — because I wanted him to form all of his opinions from a moral frame of reference, and as a Catholic myself, that's the way I framed all of my actions. And I also asked that he be a graduate of the University of Notre Dame. Aaron [Sorkin] agreed to both of them, and they became a staple of the character."

8.WHAT THE ROLE STARTED AS: When Halle Berry first read the original Bruised script, Jackie Justice was "written for a twenty-something Irish Catholic white woman."

WHAT THE ROLE BECAME: Berry "couldn't get it out of [her] mind, so [she] thought, 'Is it possible that this could be reimagined for someone like me?'" So, she pitched her idea to make it about "a middle-aged Black woman, someone fighting for a last chance rather than another chance," and producer Basil Iwanyk loved it.

He tasked her with finding a director, but in the end, she decided that she was also the best fit for that role.

She told Entertainment Weekly, "I had to go back and say, 'I've tried really hard, but what's in my head, no one else sees. This is going to sound really crazy because it's crazy for me to even think it, but I think I should direct this.'"

9.WHAT THE ROLE STARTED AS: Thor introduced Hawkeye as S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secret weapon with mysteriously perfect aim.

WHAT THE ROLE BECAME: In The Avengers, Hawkeye is under Loki's mind control for most of the movie, which left Jeremy Renner feeling like "[for] 90% of the movie, [he's] not the character [he] signed on to play." During filming, he improvised having a heart attack in hopes they'd kill his character off.

He told Hero Complex, "I'm literally in there for two minutes, and then all of a sudden… So, there's not a lot of backstory or understanding we can really tell about who Clint Barton is, or Hawkeye, and is he working for S.H.I.E.L.D. or not. There’s a lot of unanswered questions, even for me. And I was OK with that. At least I was still in the movie. And I was glad for that…"

10.WHAT THE ROLE STARTED AS: When Amanda Seyfried took the role of Mary in Pan, there was "no wirework or green screen stuff happening for [her] character."

On Late Night with Seth Meyers, she said, "I am not playing a fairy. Why would I be flying around?"

WHAT THE ROLE BECAME: It turned into a "big nightmare" for Seyfried because, during reshoots, production decided that Mary needed to do wirework. She decided that she'd never do stunt work again.

"I didn't sign up for it," she added on Late Night.

11.WHAT THE ROLE STARTED AS: Veronica Mars introduced Logan as the ex-boyfriend of the friend whose murder Veronica was trying to solve. As Neptune High's "obligatory psychotic jackass," he wasn't meant to be more than a side character.

WHAT THE ROLE BECAME: However, fans felt the electric chemistry between Jason Dohring and Kristen Bell — and so did the writers' room. So, Logan and Veronica's love story unfolded naturally, making him a key character until the very end.

12.WHAT THE ROLE STARTED AS: On The Big Bang Theory, Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler was written into the Season 3 finale as a joke character who wasn't supposed to return. Mayim Bialik, who'd previously left acting to study neuroscience, only took the role because she needed health insurance.

WHAT THE ROLE BECAME: Series co-creator Chuck Lorre was the "biggest early adopter and proponent of Mayim." Early in Season 4, Bialik was offered a series regular contract, and Amy was able to grow out of the "female Sheldon" persona and evolve into her own person.

13.WHAT THE ROLE STARTED AS: In the first two Thor movies and the first two Avengers movie, Thor was more of a classic fantasy hero — a brave warrior, a noble leader, and a reluctant "Chosen One."

WHAT THE ROLE BECAME: Inspired by negative comments director Kevin Smith made about Thor, Chris Hemsworth told Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige that he was "frustrated and bored" with the character. So, for Thor: Ragnarok, they decided to play into the actor's comedic talents and let Thor be funny.

Hemsworth told Vanity Fair, "Hearing someone like Smith, who represents the fanboy world, was such a kick in the ass to change gears. We sort of had nothing to lose. People didn’t expect what we did with it this time around."

14.WHAT THE ROLE STARTED AS: Evangeline Lilly didn't set out to become an actor, but she accepted the role of Kate on Lost because she "had enormous faith" and felt a pull toward it. Initially, she thought Kate was "kind of cool."

WHAT THE ROLE BECAME: However, as the show went on, Lilly felt like Kate "became more and more predictable and obnoxious" and "went from being autonomous — really having her own story and her own journey and her own agendas — to chasing to men around the island."

"And that irritated the shit out of me," she told the Lost Boys podcast. "I did throw scripts across rooms when I'd read them [after Kate entered a love triangle with Jack and Sawyer] because I would get very frustrated by the diminishing amount of autonomy she had and the diminishing amount of her own story there was to play."

15.WHAT THE ROLE STARTED AS: During the audition stage of Parks and Recreation, Andy Dwyer was just "the guy with the broken legs." He wasn't supposed to last beyond a few episodes, leaving after getting dumped.

WHAT THE ROLE BECAME: However, Chris Pratt's audition changed everything. Production thought he was fantastic, so they "started rewriting that character so he wasn't such a bad guy." They also promoted him to a series regular.

Series co-creator Greg Daniels told Uproxx, "That was another example of changing the characters from what you initially conceived of them to try to take advantage of something good that fell in your lap."

16.WHAT THE ROLE STARTED AS: In the original Nope script, Angel Torres was "far different than what [Brandon Perea] performed." He was supposed to be "very happy-go-lucky."

WHAT THE ROLE BECAME: In his audition, Perea decided to take inspiration from his memories of visiting the tech store as a teenager, where no one was happy to be there. Then, Jordan Peele "rewrote the character for [Perea] because what [he] performed in the audition was far different than what they imagined."

Perea told Syfy, "I was like, 'Let me bring it to a place that I can understand from the characters that I've seen in those spaces. And that's what I delivered him in the performance, and Jordan loved it."

17.And finally, WHAT THE ROLE STARTED AS: Crispin Glover initially turned down the role of the Thin Man in Charlie's Angels because he thought the character's dialogue was all terrible and "just expositional."

WHAT THE ROLE BECAME: However, he suggested some rewrites to the director, McG — what if the Thin Man didn't speak at all? McG accepted his feedback, and Glover ended up playing the villain silently.