When director Norman Jewison was casting the Loretta Castorini role in Moonstruck (1987), he had only one actor in mind: Cher. Though other stars were more popular (or considered “safer” for leads in films of the era), Jewison saw Cher as the only pick to play the Italian-American Loretta in the outer-borough New York romance.

As Ira Wells recounts in Norman Jewison: A Director’s Life (2021), Jewison didn’t fixate in the same way when it came to the Ronny Cammareri role. During the casting process, Jewison and the studio considered a number of top actors of the day before choosing Nicolas Cage. That list of contenders included Ray Liotta, who’d arrived on the scene not long before.