Amanda Seyfried Turned Down 'Guardians Of The Galaxy' Because She Thought It Would Bomb

Amanda Seyfried never really went away, exactly, but she's been having herself a nice little "comeback" recently. She's turned in great work in films like First Reformed, Twin Peaks, and this year's Mank (and, yes, the Mama Mia! films). And at one point, she was almost part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, too. Seyfried has previously commented on turning down the role of Gamora in James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy, and in a new interview, she goes into more detail as to why: she was worried the movie was going to bomb.

Once upon a time, Amanda Seyfried almost played Gamora in Guardians of the Galaxy. She turned the part down, though, and has said in the past she didn't want to sit in a make-up chair for hours for the part. "I was just like, 'Ah, I don't wanna be green. It's just so much work,'" Seyfried told ComicBook earlier this year. "I remember Jennifer Lawrence talking about once, how long it took her to get blue [for the X-Men movies]. And I was like, 'That seems like hell on earth,' because then you get to set and you're only there for a couple hours, and then you have to take everything off. And that was literally the reason."

But in a new interview with THR (via IndieWire), Seyfried gave another reason for passing on the MCU: fear of failure. "I didn't want to be part of the first Marvel movie that bombed," Seyfried said. "I said, 'Who wants to see a movie about a talking tree and a raccoon?' Which is clearly — I was very wrong."

While Seyfried's decision seems short-sighted right now, she definitely had a point at the time. While the Marvel brand was strong before Guardians of the Galaxy came out, there was some concern that the movie would not find an audience. While previous Marvel movies had focused on characters that were pretty well known – Iron Man, Captain America, and so on – the Guardians weren't exactly household names at the time. It really looked like a risk for Marvel. Of course, we now know it all worked out in the end – Guardians of the Galaxy ended up being the third-highest-grossing film of 2014.

But Seyfried didn't know that at the time. "The script was great, it was all based in not wanting to be 'that guy,'" she added in the new interview. "Because if you are the star of a giant movie like that, and it bombs, Hollywood does not forgive you. I've seen that happen to people and it was a giant, giant fear and I thought, is it worth it?"