Kathy Bates claims she was denied Frankie and Johnny role because her kissing a man ‘would not be romantic’

Kathy Bates has claimed that the late American director Garry Marshall declined to cast her in Frankie and Johnny because of her appearance.

The Oscar-winning actor, who originated the stage role for the female lead in Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune to great acclaim in 1987, has said in a new interview that Marshall did not want to cast her in the 1991 film adaptation because he did not think she was suited onscreen kissing.

The role of waitress Frankie ultimately went to Scarface actor Michelle Pfeiffer, who starred opposite Al Pacino’s Johnny.

Speaking about Marshall’s decision, Bates told Vanity Fair: “He couldn’t make the leap that people would see me onscreen kissing someone. Me actually kissing a man onscreen – that would not be romantic.”

Asked about how that remark made her feel, she replied: “Well, I’ve always had that.”

Bates went on to recall a series of instances in which her appearance had been ridiculed in the industry. The earliest example she cited was when she learnt that her father had told her hometown acting teacher: “You know, she’s not conventionally attractive.”

The actor added that one of her kissing scenes – in a film that she did not want to name – was cut from the final edit.

The year after she won an Oscar for her harrowing performance in the 1991 psychological thriller Misery, an adaptation of Stephen King’s 1987 book of the same name, Bates appeared in the adventure film At Play in the Fields of the Lord. In it, she and Aidan Quinn (Practical Magic; Desperately Seeking Susan; Legends of the Fall) played husband and wife.

Bates recalled how during the press circuit for the film, a British journalist asked Quinn: “You’re a leading man. Is it believable that you and Kathy would be married?”

“I went upstairs, I locked the door, and I cried like a kindergartner,” she said. “I wanted to get on a plane. They said, ‘Actually, Ms Bates, there’s one leaving right now.’ I said, ‘Great. Get me on it.’ I got on Virgin Air. Sat down. Picked up a magazine. It’s about Frankie and Johnny.”

In the same interview, the Matlock star said she never felt as though she “belonged” in Hollywood, “but that’s OK” because she was having a fruitful career later in life.

“I see them sail away in their gowns…. So now? It’s sweet revenge,” she said. “Oh, Miss Beauty Queen, you had a career up until your 40s and you can’t work? Too bad! I’ll think, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t say this; oh, you shouldn’t say that.’ But then I say, ‘F*** it – I’m 76. Can’t I just say it?’”

Most recently, Bates has drawn critical acclaim for her performance in legal reboot drama Matlock, in which she stars as the septuagenarian lawyer Madeline “Matty” Matlock, who was originally played by Andy Griffith in the Eighties original.

The actor’s performances in the TV shows American Horror Story and Two and a Half Men have earned her two Primetime Emmy Awards.

On the big screen, playing nurse Annie Wilkes in Misery won her a Golden Globe award as well as the Oscar for Best Actress.

She won a second Golden Globe for playing Jay Leno’s manager Helen Kushnick in The Late Shift in 1997.