Dustin Hoffman
The provenance of Wag the Dog is so unusual that there are practically no other similar production histories to which it compares. Dustin Hoffman was currently starring for director Barry Levinson in a high-profile, high-budget, highly troubled adaptation of a Michael Crichton novel just a few years removed from the record-breaking Jurassic Park. So troubled was the production that filming actually halted in order to try to iron out those problems. It was during that hiatus that Hoffman worked for no salary under the direction of Levinson on Wag the Dog; a film that was almost literally cobbled together from scratch and made during the 28 day schedule afforded by the break in making Sphere. Ultimately, Sphere would go on to receive terrible reviews while Hoffman would earn an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for Wag the Dog playing a producer infamously modeled after real life Hollywood figure Robert Evans.
Robert DeNiro
Despite being two of the biggest stars and most respected actors of the 1970’s and 1980’s—earning four Oscars between them—DeNiro and Hoffman had never acted together in the same film until Sleepers in 1996. Ironically, though both became famous through a series of gritty, hard-edged dramatic roles, the three films they have made together since then have all been comedies. Like Hoffman, DeNiro took no salary for the film so that it could restrain its budget and allow completion within the tight deadline mandated by the return of Levinson and Hoffman to the set of Sphere.
Anne Heche
After establishing a reputation as a talented actress by showcasing a phenomenal talent playing good/evil twin sisters on the daytime Another World, Heche briefly became something of an “It Girl” in the mid-90s. Within a few years of leaving TV she was suddenly starring alongside the likes of Johnny Depp, Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones on her way to being cast in the iconic role of Marion Crane in Gus Van Sant’s shot-by-shot remake of Psycho. Along the way she also snagged the plum role in Wag the Dog acting alongside living legends Hoffman and DeNiro. As if all that weren’t the stuff of Hollywood fairy tale, there’s also this: Winifred Ames was not even written for an actress. Ames was a man in the original script.
Woody Harrelson
The part of the “hero” around whom the falsely constructed war narrative is built who actually turns out to be a psychotic sex criminal offered Woody Harrelson another opportunity to play against type in the role many moviegoers still identified with him the most: the innocent and slightly stupid bartender from Cheers. Along with his Oscar-nominated performance in the title role in The People v. Larry Flynt and the infamy surrounding Natural Born Killers, the role of Schumann virtually assured that Harrelson would not have to worry about being typecast as his namesake Boston bartender.
