(Credits: Far Out / Lascher / Joop van Bilsen / Anefo / Nationaal Archief)

Sun 11 January 2026 8:30, UK

One of the most unfair aspects of working as a filmmaker in mainstream Hollywood is surely the lack of true creative control you have over your own project, because you can direct a movie, sure, but can you really have total autonomy over picking every cast member and having every scene included?

Producers and studio moguls often have the last say when it comes to casting decisions and cutting or leaving in certain sequences, and there’s little a filmmaker can do about it. Sometimes, this can result in actors being cast that the director isn’t remotely interested in…even Richard Burton.

You’d think that a director would be desperate to have Burton in their film, an icon of the silver screen widely considered one of the greatest performers of his generation, but for John Boorman, he just wasn’t convinced that the actor would be right for the role.

That role was Father Philip Lamont in the sequel Exorcist II: The Heretic, replacing William O’Malley, who was meant to reprise his role from William Friedkin’s Oscar-winning film as Father Joseph Dyer. The thing is, though, Boorman wanted a younger actor in the part, imagining someone like Jon Voight or Christopher Walken instead, but at the insistence of some higher power, he had to pick Burton.

“I never wanted Richard Burton, really,” Boorman told Vulture. “The studio kind of imposed him. I thought his character would be much younger, so I wanted Jon Voight to play the part. He prevaricated for a long time and finally decided he didn’t want to do it. He had a big problem… he was in the seminary. He was going to become a Jesuit priest. So he had a very complicated relationship with this spiritual world. It would have been a much different film if he had done it. But that’s the way it goes”. 

With Voight off the table, Boorman expressed interest in the young Walken, who had not yet scored his Oscar-winning part in The Deer Hunter, or even his bit part in Annie Hall, for that matter. He wasn’t considered well-known enough for the part, a character that was an intrinsic part of the plot, so he was cast aside.

Yet, Boorman saw real potential in Walken. He explained, “There was something brittle about him that I found interesting. You always felt that Walken could break at any point, that he could snap. And that was something that could be used.”

Perhaps it’s for the best that Walken wasn’t allowed to take on the role, because the movie was a massive failure, receiving widespread criticism so harsh that it was enough to tarnish the career of Linda Blair, who never really got the stardom people thought she was capable of.

Dubbed as one of the worst films ever made, Exorcist II: The Heretic was a low point in Burton’s career – and Boorman’s too – that is better left forgotten to the annals of time, locked away in a vault where terrible films go to die.

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