Have you, or someone you know, ever had the opportunity to be in a movie, only to have the scene(s) edited out? And is the deleted scene available or is it lost forever?
My mother’s best friend’s husband (Uncle Ace) was in a scene in the Lords of Flatbush apparently. He was singing in the scene. But it was cut from the theatrical version. I think the footage was available at one time, but I don’t know much about it.
A friend of mine, while bumming around Asia, was an extra in a Rambo movie. The scene was in a opium den that was patronized by young Americans (or Canadians, in my friend’s case) who ended up in an opium den while bumming around Asia.
After my friend was paid off, they redid the scene with Asian extras.
A friend of mine has worked in Hollywood for several decades; she’s now primarily a fight coordinator and trainer, but she started out as an actress and stuntwoman. One of her first films was Starship Troopers, and they filmed several scenes in which she was very prominently shown, nearly all of which didn’t make it out of the editing room.
My buddy Moose (RIP) was offered a role in the movie Kingpin. He spent several days working, and got paid for his time.
He got a VHS copy of the movie (this was like 25 years ago) and invited friends to his place to watch. We all sat on the edge of our seats, waiting to see our friend.
There is a point while the closing credits are playing where you can see him for a second or two.
I had a very minor role as an Anglican priest in a Russian movie about a pimp that was supposedly a romantic comedy.* I thought it was a crappy picture and never understood what my character was supposed to add to the story. But hey, it was work!
Apparently someone agreed that the character didn’t add much, because all of my scenes ended up on the cutting room floor.
*When the real vicar of St Andrew’s in Moscow found out about this, he was not amused!
My wife’s brother was an extra in Public Enemies starring Johnny Depp. He was filmed driving his restored Model A through some scenes and even had some shots taken of his face as he observed the actions of the stars, but all his bits were left on the cutting room floor. Oh well . . .
Not a speaking role or anything, but I did quite a bit of work as an extra on Stateside. One thing I learned first hand is that, ironically, unlike how movies usually portray movie-making, they don’t yell “Action” and immediately start the main action. They start with all of the background action, and then the main action starts. Also, the background action in the scene extends well outside the camera’s focus.
By the time the star, Jonathon Tucker, showed up in one scene, I’d already lead a column of troops off a bus, across the field, and circled around to get in line to head up the gangplank. In the movie, that scene starts with Jonathon Tucker’s appearance, and I’m not even visible in the background. I had a number of scenes like that.
I think in the final cut, my only “appearance” was that you can see half of the back of my head for a couple of seconds, standing by the baggage claim at the airport (I’m the guy with the shaved head and brown parka) when Tucker’s character grabs his bags off the carousel (I was waiting for my bags for at least a couple of minutes before Tucker came into the scene, was standing there for a couple of minutes afterwards, and there were background extras doing choreographed activities that were outside the frame in the final cut, all for a shot that lasted a few seconds on screen).
Also, paging @Elendil_s_Heir, who is actually visible for a few seconds as an extra in The Avengers – I can’t remember if he was filmed in more scenes that didn’t make it to the final film.
I was a stormtrooper in Star Wars. Hard to tell if my scences made it if not. 
There was an episode of Wild, Wild West in which someone spotted James West coming up the street and yelled “Jim!” There was a cut to the speaker’s PoV, and everyone in the background started moving in unison. You could tell they had been standing still until the command “Action!” was given.
I have a similar experience in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (The Whale Movie). There is a shot panning sailors in the Hangar Bay of the USS Enterprise CVN-65 and I’m one of the sailors, or am I? I might not have been in the shot and even if I am there is no way to tell for sure.
The scene was actually shot on the USS Ranger CV-61, my ship.
No, just the one scene for me, and I still think back on it fondly. Wow, that was almost ten years ago now!: I was an Avengers extra
Which is exactly why the action should start before and end after the action you want to end up on screen, and extend beyond it in physical space. I don’t know if that’s an evolution in practice from the 1960s to the 2000s, or a difference in budgets and timelines between a weekly TV series and a motion picture, or if the director of Stateside was just a better director than the director of that episode.
I spent the longest day of my life in Holly Springs MS as an extra for the movie Heart of Dixie starring Ally Sheedy. It was a crowd scene outside of the county courthouse. I was very disappointed that after going through all that misery (it was a really awful experience), the scene was not even in the movie.
I’ve never acted in a movie, but a mural I painted for, I think it was Silk Stalkings, didn’t end up being used. Maybe it was that mid 90’s bad show with a long haired dude detectiving on a motorcycle, Renegade with Lorenzo Lamas? We spent two days making a San Diego warehouse look like “Russia.”
The news desk I carved for Miss Piggy in “Muppets From Space” took like a week to make for maybe 30 seconds of screen time. So, not cut, but limited.
As a professional extra for a few yrs near the turn of the century, I would say 90% of what I worked on I was either cut completely, or so far in the background as to be completely unrecognizable.
My aunt, who is a professional pianist, was hired to perform in the movie Sweet Liberty during a banquet scene. She played in the background during the shooting, but ultimately the scene wasn’t used.
Not me, but my sister got to be an extra in an episode of Blue Bloods. The crowd she was in was literally on screen for just a split second, so it’s impossible to tell if she’s actually in the shot they used.
A buddy and I went to be unpaid extras in a funeral scene set in a church, for a local low-budget film. I noticed there was one pew about half-way down the aisle that was marked as reserved, and reasoned that one of the principle actors would likely be using that seat, so we grabbed the one just behind it on the theory that this would put us in the background of that actor’s scene.
And we were right!
Alas, in the one panning shot along the aisle that made it into the movie, you can’t see us. So not exactly cut, but not actually visible in the film, either.