Madonna has revealed that turning down a role in The Matrix ranks highly among the (very few) regrets in her life, saying that the Wachowskis’ 1999 sci fi film is “one of the best movies ever made”.
Appearing on NBC’s Tonight Show earlier this week (October 7), the pop star was asked by Jimmy Fallon about turning down the role of Catwoman in the 1992 Tim Burton film Batman Returns, as well as the lead role in Paul Verhoeven’s cult 90s movie Showgirls. “I saw them both, and I regret that I turned down Catwoman, that was pretty fierce,” she responds. “Showgirls? No.”
“But I also turned down the role in The Matrix,” the pop icon adds. “Can you believe that? I wanna kill myself. That’s, like, one of the best movies ever made. A teeny-tiny part of me regrets just that one moment in my life.”
Back in 2020, Brad Pitt also revealed that he passed on playing Neo in The Matrix, a role subsequently filled by Keanu Reeves. This does, however, mean that we came very close to living in the reality where Madonna and Brad Pitt dodge bullets together in shiny leather trenchcoats.
Later in the Tonight Show interview, Madonna also confirms that she’s making a “visual autobiography” about her life, after sharing details of a script written with Diablo Cody last year. “The reason I’m doing it is because a bunch of people have tried to write movies about me,” she says. “But they’re always men. Eugh.”
Speaking more about her disdain for the previous takes on her life, she adds: “Universal sent me this script because they wanted my blessing, and I read it, and it was the most hideous, superficial crap I ever read… I’m thinking, why would these people make a movie about my life? There’s nothing true in the script. The guy who’s making it has no understanding of women, no appreciation of women, no respect for women.”
“This happened a couple of times,” she adds, concluding: “There’s nobody on this planet that can write, direct, make a movie about me, better than me.”
The Matrix’s Neo and Trinity have recently been brought back to life by Lana Wachowski for a fourth instalment of the franchise, filmed 18 years after the last instalment, and titled The Matrix: Resurrections. Watch the trailer for the upcoming film here, and Madonna’s full interview on the Tonight Show below.