The Actress Tim Burton Almost Cast As Beetlejuice's Lydia Deetz Before Winona Ryder

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The 1980s might seem like a weird time from a distance, but if you were there for the decade, it was a largely ten-year stretch of mind-numbing conformity.

Pop music mostly sounded the same, television was dominated by rote sitcoms and nighttime soaps, and the movies were chasing the high-concept dragon. Formula was king. So anything or anybody that broke with the status quo was a godsend to those of us who weren't good, undemanding consumers. We needed off-kilter, mainstream-friendly visionaries like David Byrne, the Kids in the Hall, and Paul Reubens — artists who could be weird without offending the conservative sensibilities of the era's rank-and-file (which created problems of access if you grew up outside a major media market).

I'll forever be amazed that Reubens' Pee-wee Herman, a funny-talking dweeb who could switch from ingratiating to irritating on a dime, became an entertainment phenomenon. But I also don't think "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" would've become the surprise hit of summer 1986 without first-time feature filmmaker Tim Burton at the helm. Burton's taste for the macabre proved a harmonious blend with Reubens' sense of childlike wonder; part of being a kid is getting the wits scared out of you, and Burton was there to do that when called upon (particularly with Alice Nunn's Large Marge).

Reubens' rising tide lifted Burton's boat to an unlikely greenlight on his follow-up movie, "Beetlejuice." The project did not originate with Burton, but he molded it to reflect his dark humor and fiendishly funny imagination. Key to nailing the movie was obviously finding the right actor to portray the madcap title character, but once Michael Keaton was onboard, Burton's next challenge was finding a teenager to serve as the audience's outcast surrogate into this bizarro world. Lydia Deetz was not a familiar type in a Hollywood hung up on high school sex comedies and John Hughes flicks.

Lydia would wind up becoming a goth icon in the hands of Winona Ryder, but Burton almost missed the mark by casting a mainstream teen idol.

Who's the boss goth girl?

In an interview with the Huffington Post, Alyssa Milano revealed that her career almost took an unexpectedly strange turn when she was up for the role of Lydia Deetz in "Beetlejuice." According to Milano:

"I did get close on a movie that I really, really wanted to get when I was a kid that Winona Ryder actually got, which was Beetlejuice. It was between the two of us, and she actually got the part. I always wondered what would've been different."

Before she became a sex symbol in the 1990s, Milano played Samantha Micelli, daughter to Tony Danza's Tony Micelli on the ABC sitcom "Who's the Boss." People wanted to look and dress like her, date her or both. She was beautiful, spunky and perfect for the part of a young girl lightly bristling under the charge of her increasingly protective pops.

She was the flashing neon opposite of the death obsessed, dressed-in-black downer that was Lydia Deetz.

Burton needed an unconventional young actor, one who hadn't grown out of her awkward phase or, at least, could naturally project. Winona Ryder had already pulled this off in David Seltzer's lovely "Lucas," and, in Lydia, connected deeply with those of us who identified with the aforementioned weirdos. She was one of us.

Milano was in the midst of her America's Sweetheart phase. She might've been interesting getting cast against type, but that could've killed Ryder's career at its outset. Could "Heathers" have gotten made without her? This would've been unacceptable. We need our Winona, now and forever.