Tom Cruise in 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' Instead of Brad Pitt

What could have been! Believe it or not, Tom Cruise could have been playing one of the lead roles in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, instead of Brad Pitt, director Quentin Tarantino recently revealed.

“We talked about it. He’s a great guy, and we really hit it off. It could happen on something else,’ Quentin, 55, told Josh Horowitz on his “Happy Sad Confused” podcast of reaching out to the Top Gun actor about playing stuntman Cliff Booth before Brad, also 55, ultimately got the role. “We really hit it off,” the Pulp Fiction screenwriter added.

However, Quentin is happy with the stars — Brad and Leonardo DiCaprio — that he landed for his film. “The reality of it was, people ask, ‘Was it always these two guys?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, it’s the casting coup of the decade.’ You can’t count on that, he explained. “They both have to respond to it, they both have to want to play the roles, they have to be available. There’s a whole lot of stuff there.”

The Oscar winner added, “The reality is, I had maybe eight different pairings of actors that could go together in a realistic way in this situation. Now, the ones that I got were definitely my number ones.”

While Angelina Jolie‘s ex-husband and the Mission: Impossible star have only worked on the film Interview With the Vampire together, Brad and Leo, 44, hadn’t shared a film set before Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. Although, the pair did cross paths on Growing Pains as younger stars. “I mean, we’re talking decades ago, but we were on the same television show,” the Inception actor said during an interview on Today.