'It Didn't Seem Like It Was That Big A Risk': Matthew Modine On 'Stranger Things,' Stanley Kubrick, 'Top Gun'

(CBS Local)-- Matthew Modine is famous for being in some of the best movies of the 1980s like "Full Metal Jacket" and "Vision Quest", but he is also known for turning down parts in some of the biggest movies of the past 30 years.

Modine turned down Tom Cruise's role in "Top Gun," Charlie Sheen's part in "Wall Street" and Michael J. Fox's Marty McFly in "Back To The Future." He also said no when he was first offered Dr. Martin Brenner in "Stranger Things."

"The Duffer Brothers would be honored to know I turned it down three times," said Modine in an interview with CBS Local's DJ Sixsmith. "I just thought that I didn't want to play a bad guy. I didn't want to play an evil person and what they were pitching sounded really peculiar. I like playing good people. I want to solve problems, I don't want to create them. I don't want to be the guy who makes the problems. They were so passionate and flattering to me and knew all of my work in nuanced details. It didn't seem like it was that big a risk."

Modine was in Italy when "Stranger Things" first became a cultural phenomenon and he had little kids in Italy calling him Papa like Eleven does in the show. The 60-year-old got to introduce himself to a whole new audience and got to remind other people about his great parts like the one he played in Stanley Kubrick's 1987 hit "Full Metal Jacket."

"I can't compare the experience with Kubrick to anything else I've had because it was two years," said Modine. "The film that I just did was just shot in five weeks. It's a whole different experience. Stanley Kubrick was one of the greatest filmmakers to ever get behind a motion picture camera. What would surprise a lot of people is how small the crew was... 15 people on the set, sometimes 10. He experimented and searched for the truth of his story."

Modine's new movie "Miss Virginia" with Uzo Aduba hits theaters October 18.