An actor's journey to movie stardom sometimes requires a willingness to do things that will
keep them awake at night… overwhelmed with embarrassment.
Auditions can be more cutthroat than the bloodiest of gladiator battles, and sometimes even the
biggest stars have difficulty auditioning because of the extreme pressure.
Here are a few auditions that went horribly wrong.
Eddie Redmayne
During the casting process for A Force Awakens, Eddie Redmayne had the opportunity to audition
for the role of villain Kylo Ren.
However, because of the studio's policy of secrecy, he wasn't given the script.
The actor told Variety,
"With films that top secret, they don't give you the actual lines.
So they give you a scene from 'Pride and Prejudice,' but then they tell you you're auditioning
for the baddie.
If you're me, you then put some ridiculous voice on."
"Will you say it now?"
No script, combined with whatever embarrassing voice he had in mind, already seemed like
a recipe for disaster.
But he claims he soldiered on, saying,
"After like 10 shots, [the casting director was] like, 'You got anything else?'
I was like, 'No.'"
George Clooney
When superstar George Clooney had the opportunity to audition for legendary director Francis
Ford Coppola's 1992 version of Dracula, he decided to take a risk.
The character Clooney was auditioning for was supposed to be drunk, and Clooney, ever
dedicated to realism, decided to show up totally hammered.
"I thought that was the best way to do it.
And Coppola called my agent and said, 'he was drunk.'"
Needless to say, drunk Clooney didn't land the role.
January Jones
Before she was Betty Draper in Mad Men, January Jones managed to score an audition for 2000's
Coyote Ugly, which she later called, quote, "one of the worst moments of [her] entire
life."
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jones was asked to dance on top of a table.
She revealed,
"[They said], 'You're going to pole dance, but there is no pole.'
[…] And I just turned beet red.
It was awful, and [the producer] said something like, 'Honey, you did a great reading, but
you've got no rhythm.'
I called my agent and said, 'I don't want to do this anymore.'"
Luckily, she didn't quit on Hollywood completely.
Jake Gyllenhaal
When Jake Gyllenhaal got the call from his agents to audition for Lord of the Rings,
his whole team was beyond excited.
But, as he revealed on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, once he got to the audition,
there were no lines or context to work with.
Director Peter Jackson told him to open a box, which was supposed to contain a ring,
and to react to it.
'There were no lines so I sorta just walked up and sorta opened it and I was like, 'is
that good?'
It was, literally Peter Jackson was like..."
Things got worse when Gyllenhaal finally did a scene with lines and hadn't prepared a British
accent.
"He turned to me and he was like 'you are the worst actor that I have ever ever seen,
did anyone tell you you were supposed to have an accent?
I was like 'No' and he was like 'Well, fire your agents.'"
Aaron Paul
When Aaron Paul got the opportunity to audition for J.J. Abrams' Cloverfield, he ended up
bombing because of, well, a magic trick.
Abrams and Paul are both fans of magic, and after filming Mission: Impossible 3 together,
Abrams asked Paul to perform a magic trick for the cast.
Later, during the Cloverfield audition, Abrams insisted that Paul tell the story of his magic
trick.
He was caught so off guard that when it came time to perform a 3-page monologue afterwards,
he completely forgot his lines.
"And I just can't do it.
I stop and I give up."
Paul apologized profusely and simply told J.J. he couldn't finish the audition.
"He's like, 'That's okay.
Thanks for coming in.'
I'm like, 'See ya,' and I walked out.
It was awful."
Robert Pattinson
Before he was known for Twilight, Robert Pattinson auditioned for a role in Transformers 2.
Unfortunately, the English actor tried to push his talents a little too far by pretending
he was American in real life.
"I thought I was being so funny.
I was saying I was from somewhere in America, because I always kept thinking that if you
say you're English then they judge your American accent."
The problem was: they could see right through Pattinson's little ruse since they already
knew he was English.
"So they were listening to my backstory about being from Denver, and they're like, 'What
is this guy on?'"
Apparently, the audition was so bad, Pattinson almost got dropped by his agent.
Bradley Cooper
Director Martin Campbell's first choice to play the title role in 2011's Green Lantern
was actually Bradley Cooper.
However, as Cooper told Conan O'Brien on The Tonight Show, he totally bombed his audition.
"I couldn't not do Christian Bale's Batman when I was doing the audition."
When he was handed a mask and told to just behave normally, he immediately went into
Bruce Wayne mode.
"I was like, 'yeah yeah yeah I got it' ...listen, sally."
Cooper realized he was in big trouble when he actually got to see a clip of his audition.
"I was like…
Oh!
I'm not getting this!"
Thanks for watching!
Click the Grunge icon to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Plus check out all this cool stuff we know you'll love, too!