Tom Hanks won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for playing Forrest Gump in the 1994 movie of the same name. However, while Hanks truly made the part his own, the lovable Gump was very nearly played by Grease star John Travolta.

Travolta turned down the $40 million payday – an unbelievable $85.9 million (£65.3m) in today's money – in favour of starring in Quentin Tarantino's low-budget flick Pulp Fiction, which went on to become a cult classic. And he's not alone: Chevy Chase, Sean Penn and Bill Murray all reportedly turned down the part of Gump too.

In an interesting turn of events, Hanks and Travolta were both nominated for the 1995 Best Actor Academy Award for Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction respectively. While Hanks was the winner, it seems that Travolta harbours no hard feelings.

"If I didn't do something Tom Hanks did, then I did something else that was equally interesting or fun", he told MTV in 2007. "Or if I didn't do something Richard Gere did, I did something equally well. But I feel good about some I gave up because other careers were created."

Celebrities who turned down multimillion-dollar paydays