Face/Off Werb and Michael Colleary tried to sell to a studio from as early as 1990. The first actors who were chosen to play Sean Archer and Castor Troy were Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger respectively but John Woo instead hired John Travolta and Nicolas Cage to play those characters. It took numerous studios, producers and rewrites before John Woo became attached several years later. For the Archer character, Woo considered casting either Michael Douglas or Jean-Claude Van Damme with whom he had worked in "Hard Target". When the film was eventually made, Douglas served as an executive producer. Werb and
Margaret Travolta Margaret Travolta Margaret Travolta is an American actress and a sister of actor John Travolta. Travolta, one of six children (John, Joey, Ellen, Ann, Sam, and herself), was born in Englewood, New Jersey, the daughter of Salvatore Travolta, a semi-professional football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company, and Helen Cecilia (née Burke), an actress and singer who had appeared in "The Sunshine Sisters", a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher. Travolta's father was a second-generation Italian American and her mother was Irish American; Her family was