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From getting drunk with a future 007 to being intimidated by Thor's muscles, discover the wild and often hilarious excuses famous actors have used to explain why they completely bombed their auditions for some of Hollywood's biggest movies.
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00:00Whether you're just getting started or you're a Hollywood headliner, movie auditions are a reality
00:04for every actor. However, even the best of the best can end up getting these completely wrong
00:08and end up with an audition that completely crashes and burns, often through impressive
00:14and hilarious acts of self-sabotage. And these are excuses actors used for blowing major movie
00:19auditions. Mark Strong went on a drunken bender with Daniel Craig, a Pierce Brosnan James Bond
00:25film. Though Mark Strong didn't actually confirm the specific role outright, he did state that it was
00:30a villain in one of Pierce Brosnan's four James Bond films. In an interview with Sky One, Strong admitted
00:35that a celebratory night out on the town caused him to blow his chance at becoming a Bond icon during
00:41an audition the next day. He said, quote, I learned the lines and to celebrate I went out for a
00:46drink
00:46and I got pissed. I overdid it and then the next day I was severely hungover. I started, then I
00:52just
00:52forgot my lines, couldn't remember what they were and they all just kind of fell apart.
00:57I was sweating. It was a terrible experience but I really learned from it, end quote. The kicker
01:01though is that Strong's drinking buddy for the night was an actor who would become synonymous
01:04with 007 a few years later. He said, quote, the irony was the guy I was out with the night
01:10before
01:10getting pissed with was Daniel Craig, so I blame him, end quote. It is an incredible story and as much
01:16as Strong gets pigeonholed as a villain these days, he absolutely would make an incredible Bond baddie
01:21and better still, nowadays he probably wouldn't even need to audition for it.
01:25Tom Hiddleston gets the Pirates of the Caribbean script just before a night out.
01:30While it can be a touch frustrating to have to suddenly drop everything you're doing and
01:34immerse yourself in the world of a character for hours, the chance to have your life forever
01:39changed by one out of nowhere audition is certainly worth that small sacrifice.
01:44That's something eventual Loki star Tom Hiddleston learned the hard way.
01:48When some sides for a new little franchise by the name of Pirates of the Caribbean landed on his
01:53lap many moons ago. With the young actor promising his pal that he'd go out for a few drinks to
01:59celebrate them finishing their exams, Hiddleston eventually decided to pack the text away for the
02:04night after only a few hours of prep. Inevitably, the severely hungover and underprepared performer
02:10didn't produce his best work at the 10am audition the next day, and when asked why he didn't even
02:16bother to learn the lines for such a massive opportunity, a naive Hiddleston simply told
02:21the casting director that he only got the script at 5pm the day before. He's since learned that
02:27this is no excuse, the silly boy. You gotta take those opportunities by the balls.
02:32Jake Gyllenhaal's agents didn't tell him he needed an English accent, the Lord of the Rings.
02:37Jake Gyllenhaal was among the many young actors who auditioned for the role of Frodo Baggins,
02:41and though Gyllenhaal presents himself as a pillar of confidence these days, back in the late 90s he
02:46was still a teenager with just a handful of roles to his name. In an interview with Jimmy Fallon,
02:50Gyllenhaal confirmed that he flubbed the audition big time, citing one key reason, that his agents
02:56were so excited about scoring him the audition that they actually forgot to tell him that the part
03:00required an English accent. As a result, Gyllenhaal performed the whole audition in his own American
03:06accent, prompting Peter Jackson to offer him some brutally honest feedback and calling him the
03:10worst actor he's ever seen, and then advising him to fire his agents for failing to tell him
03:15about the accent requirement. Gyllenhaal's career obviously flourished regardless,
03:19and had he won the Frodo role, the world would have been robbed of his unforgettable work in Donnie
03:24Darko. Bradley Cooper couldn't help turning into Christian Bale's Batman in his Green Lantern
03:29audition. If it wasn't for an incredible performance from Christian Bale as the legendary
03:34caped crusader, Bradley Cooper feels he probably wouldn't have fumbled his chance to play the
03:39Green Lantern on the big screen. Before Ryan Reynolds eventually found himself in the horrendous
03:44CGI suit as Hal Jordan, Cooper read for the part too, and it was during that meeting when the star
03:50simply could not help putting on a Bale Batman voice once he donned the character's mask. Cooper would
03:56also reveal on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien that not even being told to speak in a normal
04:01voice
04:02beforehand could stop his backed sense from coming out during the scenes. Then after having a quick
04:08look at the performance he'd just produced on the monitor in the room, a rather embarrassed Cooper
04:12soon felt that his audition, one that looked like a Saturday Night Live sketch in his opinion,
04:17wasn't going to be enough to wrestle the part away from Reynolds, who Cooper admittedly claimed he would
04:22have cast if he was directing the film anyway. John Krasinski was intimidated by
04:26Chris Hemsworth's physique, Captain America The First Avenger. When he was still working on The
04:30Office, John Krasinski auditioned for Captain America, and in an interview with Graham Norton
04:35spoke about the excruciating audition process. Though he insists he was a fringe choice for Cap,
04:40he actually got far enough along to try on the Captain America costume and perform a screen test.
04:45Krasinski though said the audition fell apart when he encountered Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth,
04:49on the studio lot while putting on the costume. The scantily clad Hemsworth, bulging muscles and all,
04:55greeted Krasinski and immediately made him realise that he wasn't nearly the physical specimen
04:59necessary to play Cap. Though he ultimately did go through with the audition, his confidence had
05:04clearly been knocked by crossing paths with Hemsworth, and the eventual part went to Chris
05:09Evans. A few years later however, Krasinski would get into phenomenal shape for the 2016 Michael Bay
05:14Thorn 13 hours. Selma Hayek was too lazy for the Matrix
05:18According to Selma Hayek herself, there was just one thing getting in the way of her and a part in
05:24the iconic first Matrix movie. She was lazy. Yep, we can all relate. As the Desperado star would explain
05:31during an appearance on the Red Table talk show, after jumping through many hoops in the audition
05:36process, the various ladies competing to appear in the Wachowski's flick as Trinity were put through a
05:41physical test. This consisted of a bunch of stunt coordinators from Asia coming in and putting the
05:47women through their paces. However, despite noting how she was certainly flexible and agile,
05:53Hayek felt that her inability to run around the room once without gasping for air was the main reason
05:58she didn't end up scoring a role in the franchise. George Clooney went full method by getting drunk,
06:04Bram Stoker's Dracula. Clooney has stated in an interview that he was supposed to play a drunk guy
06:09in Dracula, but it isn't quite clear whether he's referring to a nondescript bit part or if he was
06:13in fact auditioning for Dracula himself, as went so fittingly to Gary Oldman and simply had to play
06:19drunk for the audition. Whatever the part though, Clooney ballsed up the audition in a major way by
06:23deciding to go full method. He said quote, I got really drunk to do it because I thought that was
06:28the best way to do it, end quote. Sadly, Francis Ford Coppola didn't much care for this approach and
06:33post audition the legendary filmmaker even contacted Clooney's agent to inform them that he showed up
06:38to the audition wasted. Of course, fame came well and truly a knocking for Clooney a few years later
06:43though, when he won the role of ER's dreamy, Dr. Doug Ross.
06:47And Jamie Campbell Bower's dirty joke didn't help him land the Harry Potter part.
06:52Jamie Campbell Bower was actually one of the many hopeful youngsters who tried out for the role of
06:56the boy who lived. And after being told to prepare a little joke for his meeting with director Chris
07:02Columbus, this confident lad felt he had just the gag to secure one of the hottest parts in the business.
07:08Bower recalled to the Happy Sad Confused podcast how he had heard a particularly filthy joke about why
07:14a fairy sits on top of a Christmas tree, with that cheeky joke focusing on the fact, you know,
07:19the plant was stuck up the thing's bottom. Sure enough, when it came time to deliver his rude fairy
07:23story, this potential Harry Potter was met with complete and utter silence. And in this future young
07:30Gellert Grindelwald's opinion, it was that crude one-liner that royally effed up his chances of
07:35putting on the legendary spectacles. Robert Pattinson tried and failed to pretend he was American,
07:41Revenge of the Fallen. Shortly before his career exploded with the role of vampire Edward Cullen
07:46in the Twilight movies, Robert Pattinson tried out for this small supporting role in the second
07:50Transformers film as Sam Witwicky's roommate Leo, and claims himself to have given an audition so bad
07:55it nearly cost him his agent. In an interview with MTV News, Pattinson explained that he spent the
08:01audition pretending that he was an American actor, despite the casting team being well aware that
08:05he was in fact English. He said, quote, I thought I was being funny. I was saying I was from
08:10somewhere
08:10in America, because I always kept thinking that if you say you're English, then they judge your
08:14American accent. But they knew I was English, so they were listening to my backstory about being
08:19from Denver, and they were like, what is this guy on? End quote. It all worked out for the best,
08:23though. Twilight made Pattinson an overnight megastar, and rich enough to start pursuing
08:27quote-unquote worthier acting projects in his way.
08:31Mark Maron had no idea what was going on, and didn't want the part in his Avatar audition.
08:36When talking on that podcast again, Happy Sad Confused, about his surreal experience meeting
08:42with the legendary director for a part in the then-upcoming follow-ups to the Pandora smash hit
08:47Avatar, GLOW star Mark Maron openly noted how the entire thing was ridiculous, and he wasn't
08:53excited about the idea of moving to New Zealand for a few years to shoot. Said audition saw Maron
08:59being handed a top-secret script, and being asked to read for the part of Dr. Ian Garvin.
09:05Only instead of your typical sit-down read-through, Maron ended up being thrown into a free zone,
09:10as he called it, with a bunch of other folks flying around him, and reading in parts as he
09:15attempted to imagine being on a boat on camera. Needless to say, Maron admitted to having no sense of
09:20character and no idea what was happening. Unsurprisingly, the absolutely perplexed Maron
09:25didn't quite do enough to convince Cameron he was the man for the job, and while it would have
09:30no doubt been tough to turn down the Avatar director if he did unexpectedly offer him the
09:34chance to dive into this epic franchise, Maron was somewhat relieved when he received a box of cigars
09:40after the Terminator and Aliens filmmaker opted not to cast him.
09:44Tim Curry claims that he was too terrifying. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Tim Curry, who had terrified
09:50audiences a few years earlier as the Lord of Darkness in Ridley Scott's Legend, though hadn't
09:55yet played Pennywise in the 8 miniseries, was in the mix to play Judge Doom, though he claims that
09:59the producers ultimately found his audition too terrifying for its own good. Now, Who Framed Roger
10:04Rabbit walks on a tonal razor's edge as it is, in trying to appeal to both adult fans of film
10:09noir,
10:10and young fans of animation, and evidently the filmmakers felt that Curry's innate creepiness
10:15was just a little bit too much. Considering how skin-crawling Christopher Lloyd's performance is,
10:20though, one could only imagine what Curry must have brought to the table.
10:23Eddie Redmayne's ridiculous scary voices ruin his chances of being in Star Wars.
10:28When he found himself in the middle of an audition for the role of Kylo Ren in Star Wars Episode
10:337,
10:34The Force Awakens flick, eventual Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne told the Happy Sad Confused podcast,
10:39yep, they really do get all the scoops, that he opted to dramatically alter his voice for the part.
10:45But instead of blowing away those in the room with his sinister-sounding performance,
10:50this British sensation's many different embarrassing Darth Vader
10:55voices eventually resulted in casting director Nina Gold asking him,
10:59you got anything else? He did not. And it was in that moment that Redmayne likely realised his
11:05ill-advised decision to put on a ridiculous baddie voice probably just cost him one of the biggest
11:10parts out there. Aaron Paul's audition was ruined by JJ Abrams' trolling, Cloverfield. The specific
11:16role in question here has never been confirmed, but it is almost certainly either protagonist Rob or
11:21comic relief supporting character Hood. Having previously had a small part in JJ Abrams' Mission
11:26Impossible 3, the director invited Aaron Paul to audition for Cloverfield, which Abrams was a producer on.
11:31But Abrams ended up throwing Paul off his game big time with a feat of possibly inadvertent trolling.
11:37That's because while shooting Mission Impossible 3, Paul learned that Abrams had a funness for magic
11:41tricks. And when Paul mentioned this to him, the director convinced him to try and perform a card
11:46trick in front of the entire cast, including Tom Cruise. When it came time to audition for Cloverfield,
11:51though, he asked ahead of time whether Abrams would be there and was told that he wouldn't be attending.
11:56But, lo and behold, JJ indeed did turn up and caused Paul to tank the whole thing. As told on
12:02Variety's
12:02Actors on Actors, he said,
12:04I walk in and JJ's there. He brings up the magic trick story and I lose my train of thought.
12:09I have
12:09three pages of a monologue that I memorized and that was my audition and he has to tell me the
12:14story
12:14about the card trick and now I'm super awkward. He's like, now get started. And I start doing this
12:19monologue and I completely lose my train of thought and I stop and I apologize to JJ and he's like,
12:23that's okay, thanks for coming in. And I'm like, see ya, and I walked out. It was awful.
12:27I think one. Aubrey Plaza went full method as the killer in Scream.
12:32With Aubrey Plaza trying to land the part of Ghostface in the popular Scream franchise,
12:38the Parks and Rec actor recalled to Liv Marx how she felt that going full method and dressing up
12:43as an actual murderer for the meeting would give her the best shot at being handed the iconic mask
12:48for one of the flicks. Only the team casting the movie actually wanted an actor you wouldn't
12:53expect to be revealed as the murderer. So Plaza sticking out like an insane sore thumb by
12:59intentionally dressing like a killer and looking terrible and frumpy for the audition in comparison
13:04with the rest of the glamorous lady she was up against on the day didn't exactly do her any
13:09favors. The role unsurprisingly went to one of the performers who didn't look like a legitimate
13:14slayer in the end and the actor would eventually class her call to go full method as a really bad
13:19idea.
13:19Freddy Prince Jr lectured Sam Raimi about Venom for 25 minutes. Spider-Man. Hot off a slew of
13:25commercially successful genre films like I Know What You Did Last Summer and its sequel and She's
13:30All That, Freddy Prince Jr snagged himself an audition for Spider-Man. But in a 2019 episode of
13:35his podcast Prince and the Wolf, the actor admitted that he effectively sabotaged his own shot by spending
13:39the entire meeting with director Sam Raimi talking about a character who wasn't even in the movie,
13:45that being of course Venom. He said quote, I got a meeting with Sam and I was super excited, super
13:50nervous. Went in and we sat down. It was only like three people that he was talking to and I
13:55sat down
13:55and he goes, so tell me, tell me what you love about Spider-Man. I go into this whole like
14:00universe
14:00of what my favorite parts of Spider-Man were and I foolishly bring up the alien symbiote which is Venom.
14:05When I left I literally was like, you just talked about Venom instead of Spider-Man for 25 minutes,
14:10you stupid asshole and I drove home so upset and angry end quote. This of course is extra excruciating
14:16considering that Sam Raimi himself would later reveal years later that he didn't have much of an
14:20interest in Venom as a character at all and only included him in Spider-Man 3 after being pressured
14:25by producers. Matthew Rhys blew his James Bond audition with a terrible joke. Returning to those
14:31times awkward comedy cost folks roles, as Matthew Rhys would tell the times, he was once asked to don a
14:37dark suit and read the script for the then incoming Casino Royale flick before Daniel Craig was
14:42eventually cast as 007. And it was during that meeting for the James Bond role in the intimidating
14:48Broccoli family's office when the American's actor was asked what he'd personally do differently with
14:54the Bond franchise. Immediately wondering whether what he'd just been asked was actually a trick
14:59question, Rhys instead refrained from giving a straight answer and joked that he'd like to give the
15:04iconic agent a limp. And silence. Rhys then decided to double down on the joke,
15:11following up with the suggestion of eyepatch? The casting team clearly weren't impressed by
15:15this potential 007's quips on the day and opted not to hand this nervous joker a license to kill.
15:22Michael B. Jordan blamed the vague audition script, Star Wars The Force Awakens. Michael B. Jordan already
15:27had literally dozens of roles under his belt before JJ Abrams began casting actors for The Force
15:33Awakens. But this being Star Wars, everybody not named Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford or Carrie Fisher
15:38had to audition. In a recent interview Jordan opened up about auditioning Thor Finn and the unique
15:43problem he encountered with the process. Above all else he struggled to connect with the part due to
15:48the secrecy of the production, which meant that he didn't actually audition with the scenes from the
15:52movie's script but rather ambiguous placeholder sides written specifically for the auditions. He said
15:57quote, I couldn't wrap my brain around some of the sides because, you know, when you're reading for
16:01these high level projects, there's never really any specificity in the sides. Everything's like
16:06super vague. Everything is in secret. Reading through, I just couldn't connect to it. I definitely bombed
16:11that one for sure. End quote. It is easy to picture Jordan playing a character as likeable as Finn.
16:17Though given that his failure here made for an overnight start out of John Boyega, while Jordan
16:21himself went out to enjoy enormous success in both Creed and Black Panther, it is hard to argue with
16:26the outcome for either actor. Martin Compton was dealing with extreme jet lag before his Star Trek
16:31meeting. Frustratingly for Line of Duty's Martin Compton, he'd reveal on his Restless Natives podcast
16:38that he actually explicitly requested for some time to get over the jet lag from flying all the way over
16:43to Los Angeles from the UK before being asked to come in to read for any parts. Things tend to
16:48move
16:49quite fast when it comes to meetings stateside, and Compton likely sensed he wouldn't really be
16:53able to do his best work so soon after a long-haul flight. However, when he touched down in LA
16:58at
16:59around 8 or 9 at night, he discovered an email in his inbox telling him that he had an audition
17:03for
17:04the role of Scotty in the then-new Star Trek flick the very next day. Not only that, but the
17:10actor would
17:10also need to learn a whopping three-page monologue overnight, and he ultimately ended up heading to the
17:16wrong address the day after. A move that made him two hours late. Nightmare.
17:21Harry Hamlin dissed Steven Spielberg during a hidden camera audition, Raiders of the Lost Ark.
17:26Harry Hamlin, who appeared in hit legal drama series LA Law throughout the 80s, took part in a
17:30most unorthodox audition for director Steven Spielberg, and one which he colossally screwed up.
17:36According to Hamlin, he was brought in to audition for Indiana Jones, but encountered a deeply strange
17:40audition where Spielberg asked him to make a cake.
17:43When I got there, Steven came down. He said, Harry, I'm so sorry, but George Lucas's plane
17:47is going to be late. He's flying down from San Francisco, and it's going to be at least 45
17:51minutes until he gets here." End quote. The filmmaker then asked him and an actress
17:55trying for Marion to bake a chocolate cake using the production's office kitchen, without
18:00instructions no less, before Spielberg exited the room and left the pair to figure it out for 40 minutes.
18:06Hamlin evidently didn't realize that this peculiar task was part of the audition itself,
18:10or that he was actually being secretly recorded by Spielberg and Lucas.
18:14And so Hamlin freely sounded off on the director in a way that he believes cost him the job.
18:18He explained, quote,
18:19During that time, because Amy Irving, who Spielberg later married, had been a good friend of mine,
18:24I was talking about how Amy was calling her friend group in LA and saying that this guy,
18:28this director guy, was stalking her in New York, and how she was kind of getting annoyed because
18:33this guy, Steven Spielberg, was showing up at the stage door every night with flowers.
18:37It never occurred to me that we were actually in the audition while we were making the cake.
18:42He went on to say, quote,
18:55At least he seems to have a sense of humor about it all. And while Hamlin never became a Harrison
18:59Ford team megastar, he has still enjoyed a fruitful TV career for the last four decades. So, not bad.
19:05Jamie Foxx got starstruck because of Tom Cruise during his Jerry Maguire audition.
19:11A few years before the pair would produce big screen magic together in Michael Mann's Collateral,
19:16Jamie Foxx came face to face with the movie legend that is Tom Cruise in a Jerry Maguire audition.
19:22And things didn't exactly go smoothly for the future Oscar winner.
19:26On top of attempting to show off to the Top Gun star by boasting about how many houses he had,
19:31Foxx soon found himself getting a little starstruck.
19:34Then, after Cruise decided to take a dramatic pause in the middle of the scene,
19:38his anxious scene partner assumed he lost where he was in the script,
19:42and foolishly tried to help him before being awkwardly told it was an intentional choice, Jamie.
19:47Simply put, Foxx never really recovered from the overwhelming
19:50feeling of meeting the big name actor for the first time,
19:53and blames his truly terrible Jerry Maguire audition for the role of Rod Tidwell
19:57on the fact he just could not keep his cool.
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