Household name fame costs Cross movie role

Desperate Housewives star Marcia Cross has missed out on a dream role in a touching new movie because she's too famous.

Cross asked her agent to call director Shane Stanley and request a lead role in his new movie Corners he day after picking up a Golden Globe Award earlier this year - but her joy was shattered when Stanley turned her down flat.

Ironically, Stanley, whose prison sports documentary has been turned into America's number one movie Gridiron Gang, had Cross in mind for one of the smaller characters in the film, about a community dealing with Down Syndrome, but he couldn't give the TV star the lead.

Stanley says: "I was flattered but I really wanted my three leads to be unknowns. It rarely works when you try to put high-profile TV stars in small-budget real-life movies.

"It's ironic because I had written a part with Marcia in mind before Desperate Housewives took off, and I wanted her for the smaller part. Her manager called and said Marcia would be perfect for the lead; I said, 'I'm not interested.'

"I want this film to be like Sling Blade, which was a hit partly because Billy Bob Thornton, at the time, wasn't a household name."

The $1m (€799,000m) project will star real-life Down Syndrome actor Kevin Ewing and a string of big-name cameos, including Dylan McDermott and Louis Gossett Jr.