David Bowie

These were the movie cameos that left us laughing and scratching our heads.

The Chameleon of Rock was also a talented film actor.

It wouldn’t be a Blade Runner movie without a nasty villain, and Blade Runner 2049 has a pretty creepy antagonist. Jared Leto plays blind replicant engineer Niander Wallace, a stand-in of sorts for Joe Turkel’s Eldon Tyrell, but he wasn’t originally the first choice for the role. That would have been David Bowie.

David Bowie gave his blessing for Twin Peaks to revisit his Fire Walk With Me cameo, though even the original Phillip Jeffries footage had a slight tweak at Bowie’s request. As David Lynch now reveals, there’s good reason they committed the cardinal sin of recording over Bowie.

Twin Peaks’ lengthy production and advanced age of its stars made portions of The Return feel like a memorial, even for the ones who didn’t physically appear. That was especially true of music icon and Peaks alum David Bowie, who apparently allowed his likeness to be used for one final appearance.

A few days from now, January 10 will mark the one-year anniversary of David Bowie’s surprising death and the beginning of the unending parade of horrors that was 2016. The tributes poured out in the wake of the announcement with commemorative parades and parties taking place in cities across the globe. But while the flow of memorials to the musical pioneer may have ebbed, it hasn’t stopped completely. A new report from Variety indicates that later this year, Bowie’s spirit will continue to live on at cineplexes across Europe with what is now the closest a person can get to attending an actual David Bowie concert.

With countless entertainment websites and blogs vying for every scrap of movie rumors, I’m often surprised to learn that some casting and production choices can remain a secret for years after a film is released. Take The Lord of the Rings. Back in January, actor Dominic Monaghan caused a bit of a stir when he told The Huffington Post that David Bowie had come in for a quick audition for Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth franchise. The internet immediately kicked into high gear, attempting to suss out which character Bowie might have played, until the rumor finally faded into the background of The Lord of the Rings lore.

Did you know that Labyrinth wasn’t originally conceived as a musical? Jim Henson only added songs to his fantasy film after he cast rock star David Bowie as Jareth. If you’re gonna have David Bowie playing the part, you might as well get the full Bowie. That’s just one of the an entire web of facts featured in the last episode of You Think You Know Movies!

For a revival yet to reveal a single scrap of footage, photos or plot detail, Showtime’s 2017 Twin Peaks managed to attract near everyone in Hollywood to join its expansive cast. That said, not everyone could return for David Lynch’s eternally weird murder-mystery, and it seems the passing of David Bowie denied us yet another high-profile appearance.

Dominic Monaghan, known for his role as Merry in the Lord of the Rings series of films, sat down for an interview in which he tossed off a delectable anecdote about running into Bowie at the casting sessions for Peter Jackson’s fantasy epic. Instead of instantly vomiting and hastily fleeing the room, as this writer would have done, Monaghan kept it pretty cool.