Corey Feldman is angry with Johnny Depp: he did not get this role in the nineties

Over 30 years after the film came to cinemas, actor Corey Feldman (53) still cannot forgive a very specific colleague that he could not be seen in “Gilbert Grape – somewhere in Iowa”. From Billy Corgan (58) Feldman revealed that he blames Johnny Depp (61) not to have had a role in the 1993 film classic.

In his testimony, he should have played the disabled younger brother of Depp’s figure. But he lost the role of Leonardo DiCaprio (50), who later received an Oscar nomination as the best supporting actor for his representation as Arnie Grape. “I was actually cast for the role of Leonardo DiCaprio,” said Feldman in the podcast. “I never saw the film because I’m still bitter.”

Johnny Depp made sure that he was thrown out. “He was cast after me and apparently whispered the producer in the ear that he didn’t like me. He said I was a junkie and that he didn’t work with Junkies.” He tells this story for the very time. He did not take any drugs at the time, said Feldman.

“I was sober,” the actor looks back now. “I had just come out of the withdrawal clinic. I had turned my life up and tried to help River Phoenix with whom Depp was a lot as we all know.” Phoenix and Depp were close friends in the early ninety and often stayed in Depp’s night club “The Viper Room”. Tragically, Phoenix died of drugs there in October 1993.

In retrospect, Feldman suspects that he was “a thorn in the eye”. “If I hadn’t been pushed out and had played this role, who knows what would have happened from there,” he asks himself. But it does not help to hang up on these questions. “You leave them behind.”

Later he competed with Leonardo DiCaprio again for an important film role. “Ironically, I was also in conversation for ‘Titanic’ a few years later, so there was a kind of double bang with Leo,” says Feldman. “But that was okay, because in this case I wasn’t that close.”

Corey Feldman is primarily known for his roles from film classics from the 1980s – this includes films such as “Gremlins” from 1984, “The Goonies” from 1985, “Stand by Me” from 1986 or “The Lost Boys” from 1987. After these successes, his career suffered greatly because of his drug addiction, which he overcame in 1991 with a stay in a withdrawal clinic. However, the great success as a sought -after Hollywood star failed to materialize.