The idea of an actor fluffing up their resume with unreal skills might sound like something
out of a sitcom, but plenty of actors have been caught red-handed.
Here's a fond look back at a few of those major actors who've lied to get the big part.
It's hard to believe that a hunk like Chris Hemsworth, who has flexed both his massive
muscles and his funny bone as the Asgardian God of Thunder Thor in the Marvel Cinematic
Universe, would ever have to lie in order to persuade casting directors to give him
a role.
Just as Hemsworth surprised us with his comedic timing in Thor: Ragnarok …
"Hang on.
Give it a second.
I swear I'm not even moving.
It's just doing this on its own."
... he shocked fans when he admitted to Radio Times that he used to lie about his height,
of all things, to get more work.
The 6-foot-3 Aussie admitted,
"There are certainly things I've wanted to go up for which I've been totally wrong for,
physically.
And I normally lie about my height and say I'm shorter.
But it can go two ways.
The brief for the audition for Thor said: must be over 6ft 1in, which I'd never seen
before!"
To score the role of Queen drummer Roger Taylor in the Bryan Singer-directed biopic Bohemian
Rhapsody, Ben Hardy got caught up in his own little fantasy.
Hardy really wanted the job, and told Singer what he called "a big lie" about his drumming
skills in hopes of getting hired for the film.
Having previously collaborated with Singer for X-Men: Apocalypse, Hardy sent the director
an email inquiring about Bohemian Rhapsody and asking, quote, "in the nicest way possible"
if Singer thought he could be in the film.
Hardy told People,
"I told [Singer] I could play the drums, which I couldn't at the time."
Singer asked Hardy to record himself drumming to a song to show the producers, and Hardy
panicked, but then he got to work.
"Ready Freddy?"
"Let's do it."
"I bought the cheapest drum kit I could find and found a drum teacher locally and was like,
'Look, here's the deal I need to learn to play this song as soon as possible, what can
you do?'"
Luckily for Hardy, his lie, and his training, paid off big time.
It's hardly a secret that Robert Pattinson has doctored his resume in the past, falsely
claiming that he attended Oxford University and London's illustrious drama school the
Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts as a way to score roles after moving to America.
But alongside that deceit, he also lied about his nationality in order to make himself more
marketable to Hollywood big shots.
As Pattinson confessed to the Daily Mirror,
"I [lied about my education] for years.
But it didn't work when loads of English people started moving to Los Angeles.
So then I pretended to be American for a bit."
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and in the case of character actor Todd Lawson
LaTourrette, a difficult situation drove him to do the unthinkable.
An amputee and self-described war veteran, LaTourrette built a satisfactory career in
film and on television, using his missing hand and the trauma of his past to inform
his approach to roles.
"How exactly did you lose it?
Your arm?"
"I was riding shotgun in a Humvee in Kandahar.
We drove right over an IED."
Casting directors liked what they saw and tapped him for parts in films like The Men
Who Stare at Goats, Beer for My Horses, and on television series including Longmire, and
the acclaimed Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul, where he made a blink-and-you'll-miss-it
appearance.
But LaTourrette's career was founded on a lie.
In November 2018, he revealed that he'd been dishonest about being a war veteran and that
he didn't lose his hand while serving overseas.
The truth of the matter is arguably even grimmer: 17 years before, LaTourette, experiencing
what he described as a "psychotic episode" during a time he was off medication meant
to manage his bipolar disorder, severed his own hand with a saw.
His lie worked, but the guilt was too much to bear, so LaTourette decided to come clean.
"I was dishonorable.
I'm killing my career by doing this."
"If anybody wants to think this was for personal edification, that's not the case."
Laurence Fishburne has done it all.
From scoring an Academy Award nomination for his performance as Ike Turner in What's Love
Got to Do with It to dipping his toes into the DC Extended Universe and the MCU, Fishburne
is something of a legend.
"WOOOOWEEEEE!"
But he's also a little bit of a liar, too, as the actor fibbed to director Francis Ford
Coppola so he could star in Apocalypse Now.
In 1976, a then-14-year-old Fishburne told Coppola that he was actually 16 in efforts
to boost his chances at landing the role of 17-year-old Tyrone "Mr. Clean" Miller.
Coppola bought the lie and cast Fishburne in the war epic, which was famously fraught
with production issues.
By the time the film finally debuted in theaters in May of 1979, Fishburne was actually as
old as his character.