Madonna & Michelle Pfeiffer were early favourites for Working Girl lead

Madonna and Michelle Pfeiffer were considered for the lead in classic movie Working Girl before Melanie Griffith landed the role.

The stars and producer Doug Wick have opened up about the project to The Hollywood Reporter to mark the 30th anniversary of the film, and Wick recalls Griffith was not the first choice for the role of Tess.

"We talked about a lot of people to play Tess," he tells the publication. "Because it was Mike (Nichols) directing, everyone was interested.

"I remember Mike once calling me and saying Madonna was on The Tonight Show. He said, 'Watch her, there's something very interesting about her'. We talked about Michelle Pfeiffer, the most beautiful woman in the world. But we observed that if you cast someone like that, there would've been a line of guys at her desk trying to marry her.

"We needed an old-fashioned movie star. Someone who, when they had glasses on, you believed they had a little anonymity, and as soon as they took them off, you saw they were a beauty. You needed someone fiercely intelligent but in a slightly more unique way."

Meanwhile, Griffith recalled a creepy car scene with a young Kevin Spacey in the film: "It's a strange coincidence that Kevin's now ostracised because of his actions, his sexual proclivity or whatever," she explains. "In Working Girl, I jump out of the car because of his (character's) sexual advances."

Spacey was fired from Netflix drama House of Cards and edited out of Ridley Scott's film All the Money in the World after sexual misconduct and harassment allegations were made against him.