Photo credit: Murray Close

“Just saying yes to this one thing could completely change my life, and I don’t know if it’s going to be for the better.” - Jennifer Lawrence on taking the role of Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games.

Lawrence is hardly the first actor to consider turning down a big role. While it's hard to imagine some of our favorite movies without the actors who played the lead characters, it's not terribly uncommon for those actors to hesitate before signing the contracts. From Katniss to Holly Golightly, here are ten characters that were almost played by a different actor. Link

It's cheap, it's lightweight, and it runs on renewable energy. Best of all, it actually exists. 

Izhar Gafni has worked in a number of fields, but until recently, cardboard bike design wasn't one of them. Inspired by the cardboard canoe and inexpensive computer tech (like the Raspberry) that have made these items affordable for consumers all around the world and easy to manufacture, Gafni realized a bicycle that was easy to build, sturdy, and most importantly, made of renewable resources, was probably something the world needed. But it wasn't easy, as he attests. This short film documents the design's concept and early models through to final design, shown above. 

Manufacturing the bike will cost between $9 and $12 per unit, and $5 for a smaller children's version. Link -via

The journey through Physics can be a treacherous one filled with many setbacks. Thankfully, an enterprising soul decided to sit down in 1939 and draw up a map. The Map of Physics is a "a brief historical outline of the subject as will be of interest to physicists, students, laymen at large," which organizes the field's  many branches into rivers and tributaries. These are surrounded by towns named after important physicists, situated on the appropriate shorelines of their study's focus. Link -via The Big Picture

"Sleeping with the fishes" takes on a less sinister meaning thanks to a new bed design that places your head directly below a 650-gallon fish tank. For the low, low price of $11,500, you can rest easy knowing you don't have to purchase matching lamps, which are included. Despite the price and any claustrophobia or concerns about leaky seams you might have, the design is pretty awesome. And it's not even the weirdest or most expensive in this list, which includes a floating bed and one made of solid gold. Link 

Photo: Furnitureland South/Acrylic Tank Manufacturers

Screen tests offer an interesting look at actors before they fully "become" a character. As Alison Nastasi at Flavorwire puts it, "It’s a chance to see popular stars, who always appear so glamorously surefooted, build the framework for the movies that made them famous in a smaller, bare-bones setting." Indeed. Check out Ralph Macchio testing for Karate Kid, above, and click through for more classic hits like ET, Tootsie and Titanic. Link

Love Barbie? Love cruise ships? You're really going to love this: The Royal Caribbean Barbie Premium Experience, an all-pink, all-Barbie extravaganza at sea, featuring such amenities as the Barbie Stateroom, a Mermaid Dance Class, and (of course!) a Fashion Show. For the average human person, this is probably too much pink and certainly too much Barbie. But for a certain kind of little girl (and grown-up little girl, too), Royal Caribbean just created a real-life version of heaven. Link

If you saw the episode in question, then you know that the characters didn't bother counting it to find out. But this stack of money, shown above, has maximum and minimum values that can be determined by the estimated dimensions of the stack. Since the midseason finale, all kinds of people have tried their thumb at counting that cash without actually counting it. Cockeyed.com is no stranger to calculating quantities and volumes from images, and based on various angles from the Breaking Bad episode, this is their guess. And here, another estimate from Quora's Tom Cook. And finally, a roundup of guesses from TV.com. How much money do you think is there?

Image: Lewis Jacobs/AMC

You're looking at the Librería El Ateneo Grand Splendid, a 1920s theater in Argentina that has been converted into the fanciest bookstore in exsistence. The theater boxes now serve as quiet reading rooms, and as one of the busiest bookshops in the country, the selection is incredible. For more awesome bookstore built in spaces that used to serve very different purposes, check out the collection on Flavorwire. Link | Images

You know what a love hotel is: heart-shaped beds, dimmed lighting, mood music. Now the same accomodations will be available for your pup, assuming you live in Brazil. 

Fabiano Lourdes and his sister Daniela plan this week to inaugurate "Animalle Mundo Pet," an eight-storey building with an entire floor devoted to dog tryst in the southeastern city of Belo Horizonte, according to reports.

It's probably not surprising that some stars are also big fans of video games (ahemSeth Rogencough), but you might be surprised to learn that Rosario Dawson is an avid gamer who attends Comic-Con events in full costume to go unnoticed.

Here are 15 celebrities with a secret gaming addiction. Link (Image: Georges Biard/Wikipedia)

It could be worth as much as $100,000, but the 5.5-inch-by-9-inch Renoir painting purchased at a flea market cost less than $50 and came with a Paul Bunyan doll. The buyer liked the look of the frame and took it to an auction house to have it assessed. And that's when art experts realized that the tiny little oil could be Renoir's Paysage Bords de Seine, which has been missing since sometime after 1925. There's little doubt that the work is a forgery genuine. "You just see it and you know it’s right," said one art expert working at the Virgian auction house. Link

Who says a dropout can't lead the nation? Though 25 of our former and current 44 Commanders in Chief were practicing lawyers at some point before taking office, some others just didn't seal the deal, leaving law school before earning a degree. Business Insider has their stories, from Woodrow Wilson (shown here) to Harry S. Truman, plus one bonus almost-president. Link

Photo: Library of Congress 

Artist and professor Courtney Johnson uses a technique called "cliché-verre" to create her incredible cityscapes. It requires painting the scene on glass, then scanning and printing the work on photo paper, making a faux-photograph of sorts.

“Historically employed during times of change, cliché-verre serves as a bridge between the past and the future as we transition into the digital era, and also as we move from the era of landscape to the cityscape,” she writes. “The images in this series depict characters in our new global mythological system: cities.”

The entire Glass Cities collection, including cities from San Francisco (shown above) to Kuala Lumpur, is gorgeous. Check it out on Flavorwire. Link

These are quadrotors equipped with multicolor LEDs -- 49 of them, flying/dancing in unison. The show, called Cloud In the Network, took place at German art conference Ars Electronica. This is reportedly the largest number of synchronized drones in flight, and as Motherboard author Derek Mead notes, is probably "what the end of the world will look like, when Skynet finally launches the missiles." Link

If you aren't familiar with Bad Lip Reading, now is a great time to get current. Movie clips and commercials are dubbed with whatever words seem tomatch the speakers' mouths. And it's brilliant. This time, BLR tackles Bella and Edward's super-complicated romance, and as Buzzfeed rightfully notes, "it's still a better love story than Twilight." Link via Buzzfeed