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Cutting room floor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The term Cutting room floor is used in the movie business when footage shot is not used in the final release, often edited out and ending up on the floor of the editing room.
Although this happens partially for every actor ever filmed, many famous actors' entire appearance in a particular project have ended up on the cutting room floor at one stage or another throughout their careers, including Charlie Chaplin (when he accidentally walked onto the set of a "Keystone Cops" upon first arriving to Hollywood), Eric Stoltz's entire performance as Marty McFly in Back to the Future (when director Robert Zemeckis decided to recast Michael J. Fox halfway through filming because Stoltz's performance was not light-hearted enough), and Johnny Depp's performance in Platoon (Oliver Stone felt Depp's storyline distracted from the core of the story).
The actors still get paid for the performance (since they did film the 'cut' scenes, even though they were removed) and since the advent of the DVD, their performances may often be resurrected via extended director's cuts, or as extras on the "Deleted Scenes" portions included on many DVD releases.