The Actor Who Almost Played Game Of Thrones' Illyrio (& Why He Passed)

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Here's the actor who passed on playing Game Of Thrones' Illyrio Mopatis, and why. Despite their popularity with readers, fantasy novels were rarely treated with much respect by major studios before Peter Jackson's The Lord Of The Rings movies. This trilogy showed it was possible to bring these fantastic worlds and creatures to life and still have audiences fully engaged with the story and characters. George R.R. Martin's epicA Sing Of Fire And Ice books debuted in the '90s, but given the sheer wealth of material they contained, a movie adaptation didn't seem feasible. Even followers of the books were skeptical a TV series could do justice to the source material, but they were quickly proved wrong when it arrived in 2011.

Game Of Thrones brought the iconic characters, shocking twists and gory carnage of Martin's world to vivid life. It soon became one of the biggest TV series in history, with later series often featuring battle sequences that put blockbuster movies to shame. Unfortunately, part of Game Of Thrones' history is that once it caught up with Martin's books and had to create original storylines, the quality faltered dramatically. It also felt with the last two seasons that it was racing to the end, with long-brewing character arcs being truncated or outright dropped. Game Of Thrones finale also proved immensely disappointing to many viewers.

Related: Game Of Thrones' Failed Pilot Would've Actually Made White Walkers Better

Time will tell if prequel series House Of The Dragon — which details the downfall of House Targaryen — will go some way towards redeeming the reputation of the franchise. Another well-recorded part ofGame Of Thrones lore is that the pilot episode was badly received and has — to date — never