10 Times Actors Lost Million-Dollar Roles Due To Bad Auditions

Everybody has embarrassing moments that can cost them a huge chance of changing their lives. A-list movie stars are no exception to these. These actors lost million-dollar roles because of bad auditions, and their stories are pretty embarrassing. It shows that celebrities are just humans with flaws and imperfections like us, no matter how charming and perfect they can be on the silver screen.
So let's see what these embarrassing stories are and have a good laugh out of them. Here is the list of 10 times when famous actors lost million-dollar roles.

1. Meryl Streep Lost Her Role After The Casting Director Called Her Ugly

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Meryl Streep was only 27 when she was called in to audition for Dino De Laurentiis's remake of King Kong. Her performance was fine, but the producer didn’t like her appearance. De Laurentiis even commented in Italian how ugly she was right in front of her, thinking that the actress wouldn’t understand.
Unlucky for him, Streep knew Italian and understood perfectly what he was saying about her. So she replied to him, saying "I'm sorry you think I'm too ugly for your film, but you're just one opinion in a sea of thousands, and I'm off to find a kinder tide."

2. Tom Hiddleston Was Too Drunk To Play Will Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean

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Tom Hiddleston could have played Will Turner in Pirates of the Caribbean if he hadn't been drunk the night before the audition. However, we can’t really blame him for that. Back then he was just a freshly graduated student of drama school and didn't really understand how the industry worked. He received the script the night before the audition but had no idea about how important it was.
So like any other freshly graduated student, Hiddleston went out drinking with his friends to celebrate the final exams and forget about the script. The next day he woke up with a terrible hungover and couldn’t remember his lines. Needless to say, the casting director wasn't very pleased and Hiddleston lost the role.

3. Eddie Redmayne Could Have Been Kylo Ren in Star Wars Episode VII

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Redmayne’s audition for the role of Kylo Ren is catastrophic. because the film was such a big deal back then, Redmayne wasn’t given the actual lines of the movie, but ones from Pride and Prejudice instead. The actor recalled that he had to play a scene from Pride and Prejudice thinking he was auditioning for the baddie.
Redmayne still gave it his best though. Sadly, after 10 attempts he still wasn’t successful in impressing the casting director, Nina Gold. The actor recalled that hilarious moment, saying “I was trying again and again with different versions of my kind of Darth Vader breathing sound voice. And after like 10 shots, she's like, 'You got anything else?' I was like, 'No.'"

4. Michael B. Jordan Almost Starred In This Movie Too

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Jordan’s audition for the same role also wasn’t his greatest experience. In fact, it was so bad that the actor described it as one of his "worst to date”. Like Redmayne, Jordan was left completely in the dark and got no specificity on the sides. He couldn’t connect anything and didn’t understand his character at all. Things got so bad that he basically ran out of there.

5. Timothée Chalamet Had A Panic Attack On The Set Of Spider-Man: Homecoming

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Timothée Chalamet threw away his chance of joining the MCU's Spider-Man family. He auditioned for the role of Spider-Man, but after reading the script twice he got into a total panic mode and left the set sweating like crazy. The actor wanted to go back and try it again, but his agent talked him out of it.

6. And So Did Chris Evans On The Set Of Gone Baby Gone

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Speaking of actors lost million-dollar roles because of their panic attacks, Evans also lost his chance with Gone Baby Gone the same way Chalamet lost his role as Spider-Man. Evans was fine until he saw Ben Affleck, which instantly made him nervous. The actor tried to swallow it down, but it only got worse after he had some really awkward conversation with Affleck about where he parked his car.
Affleck was pretty chill about it, but Evans was so nervous that he kept giving one-word answers to their questions. He admitted that he felt so stupid and “just wanted to get the fuck out of the room”. Recalling the situation, he said: "It was horrible, a complete disaster. So obviously, I did not get that job."

7. Henry Cavill Could Have Been James Bond In Casino Royale

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Henry Cavill could have been James Bond, but unfortunately he didn’t have the time to get in shape for the role. During his audition, he was given a scene where Bond wore only a towel. The director, Martin Campbell, took a look at him and said “Looking a little chubby there, Henry.”
Cavill admitted that he didn’t know how to train or diet, and he was glad that Martin said something. He wasn’t offended by the comment at all cause he thought it was true and it helped him get better.

8. Jake Gyllenhaal Lost His Chance To Play Frodo In The Lord of the Rings series

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Gyllenhaal shared about his hilarious audition once in an interview with Jimmy Fallon. He was auditioning for the role of Frodo in The Lord of the Rings series but failed miserably. The scene he was given had no lines, and Gyllenhaal was told to look at the ring without any explanation so he didn't realize the gravity of it.
It only got worse from there. Gyllenhaal didn’t know that he was supposed to use the British accent during his audition, so everything was a mess. The process was so bad that Jackson jokingly told Gyllenhaal that he was the worst actor he had ever seen.

9. Elizabeth Olsen Bombed Her Audition For Daenerys In Game of Thrones

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Elizabeth Olsen didn’t have much luck with her audition for the role of Daenerys in the series Game of Thrones either. The actress did the Khaleesi speech when she comes out of the fire, but it wasn’t a good performance. The casting director called her audition "awful" and Olsen wasn’t called back.

10. Nicholas Hoult For The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

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Nicholas Hoult described his audition for Caspian in the second Narnia film as one of his “all-time worst” auditions. They told him that he needed to do a Hispanic accent, one like Antonio Banderas as Puss in Boots. He wasn't expecting the request at all and failed.
These actors lost million-dollar roles because of their bad auditions, but there are other movie stars who lost their chances because of their bad decisions too. They said no to iconic characters that could have changed their names and taken them to the next level. Let's find out their regrettable stories and who they could have played if they hadn't said no so fast.