“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” star Rob McElhenney recently recalled one of the major low points of his acting career: Getting cut out of the 1997 crime thriller “The Devil’s Own” starring Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford.
“That was one of the most humiliating and terrible experiences of my life because it was my first acting job in a movie,” McElhenney said during a recent appearance on “Hot Ones.” “I got to do a scene with Harrison Ford, I got to do a scene with Brad Pitt, I got to do a scene with Julia Stiles, Rubén Blades — all these incredible actors.”
The late ’90s actioner followed a police officer (Ford) who takes in a young house guest (Pitt), only to discover that he is an Irish Republican Army terrorist on the run.
“The movie’s coming out, and I notice I don’t get an invite to the premiere or the friends and family screening,” McElhenney continued. “But I’m still just starting out — I’m like 19 or something, 18, I’m thinking, ‘Oh, it’ll be fine.’ Of course, for a year, I’m telling everybody I got this movie; nobody believes me because I hadn’t worked at all doing anything else. And then, we go to the movie — all my friends, everybody, my family buys tickets — and I’m just not in it at all. They cut me completely out of the movie, didn’t give me a heads up, nothing. They were all A-players and I was a D-player on the ground. I wasn’t even a player, I was on the editing room floor.”
The following year in 1998, McElhenney finally made his feature debut in Steve Zaillian’s “A Civil Action” starring John Travolta and William H. Macy.
