Sir David Jason axed from huge movie he dreamt was his 'Hollywood breakthrough'

Sir David Jason says that he lives in Del Boy's shadow

Only Fools and Horses star Sir David Jason admitted his life came crumbling down after losing out on a movie role he thought would bring royal status in Hollywood.

The 84-year-old acting veteran is no stranger to the small screen, but had hoped his next move would bring him more exposure in the United States. However, in a confidence-shattering decision from producers, he was brutally replaced with another star.

Detailing the gut-wrenching moment in his new memoir This Time Next Year, David revealed he was cut from the cast shortly after the pandemic in 2020.

“Still Open All Hours wasn't the only project of mine that got wiped out by the pandemic. Something much bigger also went down the pan. A feature film I was all lined up for. Oh yes indeed: the movies. Hollywood! Well, actually I'm not sure. Maybe Borehamwood.”

He wrote: “But we were deep into discussions, that much I can tell you. By which I mean there had been a meeting. Big movie, apparently. Kind of a ghost story, if I understood the pitch properly. Glittering all-star cast, definitely - subject to confirmation, of course, as these things inevitably are. Bound for Netflix, don't you know.”

David worked out he'd been asked from the film in a heartbreaking way (Image: Getty Images)

He said the flicked was due to be the “most enormous smash at the box office” and would make “vast inroads into the streaming market”. After meetings with the casting team, David agreed to take part in filming the new upcoming production.

David recalled Boris Johnson broadcasting to the nation in front of a podium and that all of a sudden, "everything was cancelled".

“And once again my prospects for that big breakthrough on the silver screen were on ice, along with the plans for my Malibu beach house. (Nothing too flash; 15,000 square feet or so, ocean views, motorised glass windows - you know the kind of thing.)"

In the book, he jokes about "dangling film roles under my nose" and admitted he'd discovered that it "pays to retain a high degree of scepticism" and "try not to count your chickens and/or your Malibu beach houses". He said that "quite frequently" it's "only the talk that takes place and nobody ends up filming anything at all. Or not with me in it".

Nicholas Lyndhurst and David Jason attend the National Film Awards (Image: Getty)

After the lockdown, David didn’t hear back about the movie, but did make a devastating discovery while waiting for a dentist appointment. “Please now imagine some years going by. Whole years. Moons wax and wane. A global pandemic comes and goes. The prime minister changes, many times. Love Island happens again and again and again."

In 2023, he was browsing a newspaper in a dentist's waiting room when he noticed an advert for one of that week's new cinema releases: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, starring Jim Broadbent. It was the title of the film he'd had meetings about, but his name was nowhere to be seen.

“Lowering the paper slowly to my lap and equally slowly raising my head, I stare across the room and enter a state of what I can only describe as mournful reverie, broken eventually by a woman's voice. 'The dentist will see you now, sir.'"

David admitted that he "completely understands" the decision, calling Jim Broadbent a "superb actor with a major background in film". But he still slammed the producers in the book, "It's just that... well, what about that meeting? Didn't we have an arrangement here? Anyway, I retreat and quietly nurse my bruises - from this development and also, of course, from the dentistry. (Installation of a crown: never fun.)"