Timothy Olyphant Has a Funny Story About Getting Fired from ‘Practical Magic’

11 Sep 2026, 15:18 by Chrissy Stockton · Thought Catalog

Columbia TriStar / Hulton Archive via Getty Images

Updated 6 minutes ago, September 11, 2026

Timothy Olyphant is a terrific actor who has donned the Ghostface mask in Scream 2, faced off against a serial killer in A Perfect Getaway, fled from the government in The Crazies and portrayed a badass U.S. Marshal in Justified. But even great actors have bad jobs — whether it’s a poor fit, the director’s personal feelings or any number of reasons that have nothing to do with talent.

Timothy Olyphant steps out at the Hollywood Legion Theater on June 23, 2026, for the HBO premiere of “Life, Larry and The Pursuit of Unhappiness.” Photo by Leon Bennett / Getty Images.

One of Olyphant’s bad jobs was as a police investigator and love interest of Sandra Bullock’s character in Practical Magic — a job from which he was fired. As he told Jimmy Fallon, he was too young for the part, wasn’t a good fit and was unceremoniously replaced by Aidan Quinn.

Here’s how it went down:

“I was in a movie for a minute there called ‘Practical Magic’ with Sandra Bullock. If any of you have seen the movie you know how this ends.

I got fired from that movie. I got hired last minute… I took the job, I rehearsed for a couple days and I was just terrible… As I was leaving for the airport I got a call from my agent and my business manager… he was talking to a colleague that morning and said his new client Tim Olyphant was doing a Sandra Bullock movie. The colleague said, ‘Oh that’s great. My client, Aidan Quinn, he’s in that movie. What’s Tim playing?’

Photo by Chrissy Stockton.

My business manager said, ‘He plays a sheriff who falls in love with Sandra Bullock. What’s Aidan doing?’

The other business manager says, ‘He plays a sheriff who falls in love with Sandra Bullock…’

And they’re like, ‘Is it a movie about two sheriffs who fall in love with Sandra Bullock?’

By the way, that would have been a good movie.”

Aidan Quinn did indeed replace Olyphant in Practical Magic. Luckily, Olyphant had a great agent who immediately booked him onto another movie, the crime comedy Go (1999) — and he even got to keep the hotel room he’d reserved to film Practical Magic, staying there while he shot Go instead.

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