Al Pacino reveals he was offered "a fortune" to play Han Solo

We could have seen a very different galaxy far, far away, as the scoundrel Han Solo could have been played by one Al Pacino. Back when George Lucas was getting the cast together for A New Hope, he wanted The Godfather and Heat star to make an appearance as the pilot of the Millennium Falcon.

As Pacino tells it in his memoir Sonny Boy, and as he told Entertainment Weekly, he was offered "a fortune" to be in Star Wars. But, he ultimately turned the role down. "I said, 'I think I'm in the mood to make Harrison Ford a career,'" Pacino teased.

"I was doing a show on Broadway at the time, and they handed me this script, and I thought, I don't understand," he said, explaining his thoughts on why he actually turned down Star Wars. "[I thought], I must be out of space myself. But I looked at this thing and I sent it to Charlie Loughton, my friend and mentor, actually. I said, 'What do you make of this?' He was pretty wise and he said, 'I don't get it, Al. I dunno. I don't get it.' I said, 'Well, I don't either; what are we going to do? They offered me a fortune, but I don't know. No, I can't play something if I don't speak the language.'"

It seems everything worked out for the best in the end. While Harrison Ford would rather remove his kidney with a rusted spoon than talk about Star Wars these days, he did fit the role of Han Solo pretty perfectly.