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Michael B. Jordan blamed his failed Star Wars audition on a vague script.
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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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