9 Actors Whose Audition Stories That Sound Like A Joke

Anything can happen in the audition: good result or bad one. It can pull any actor down off of their high horse, no matter how famous they get. Ask any actor out there, both famous and not-so-famous, and they will tell you that auditioning is the absolute worst part of their job. Many might not know that it is true that even the hugest and highest-paid actors all started out going to one humiliating audition after another.
For example, Meryl Streep, one of the greatest actresses of all time, had to hear she was too ugly for a role. Years later, she shared the details during an interview and the history went viral. She is not the only actor who had a terrible audition, this happened even worse to others who do something silly.
Below are actors who relive their most humiliating audition stories. You can read these articles to have a fun time: 20+ Times Actors Auditioned For A Different Role But Made Another Iconic, 16 Actors Who Bombed Their Audition, and 14 Movie Stars Could Have Got a Win-Win Role.

#1 A casting director called Meryl Streep ugly

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Before getting famous, Meryl Streep was a struggling actress. She was called in to audition for Dino De Laurentiis’ remake of King Kong but the producer had an issue with her look. De Laurentiis even commented, right in front of her, on how so ugly she was. The actress expressed her attitude, 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 Ryan Gosling was the victim of a clueless casting director

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During the audition for the role of Sebastian Wilder in “La La Land”, when Gosling was baring his heart and soul in an emotional performance, some casting director cut him off with a phone call. They didn’t seemingly care much about his audition. Fortunately, the actor still landed the role.

#3 Bill Nighy had to sing 'Smoke On The Water' in Heels

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Despite his experiences years, Bill Nighy has only been an in-demand actor for the last couple of decades. He had to endure some pretty grueling auditions and a few of them were so bad. He shared, "One audition was in a disused tax office... I was 46. They put me in very tight hipster loon pants, four-inch fake alligator platform heels, a top that did not meet my trousers, eye make-up, and hair extensions. I had to karaoke to Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water.' After all that, you really want to go home."

#4 Emma Stone made up an unforgettable character on the spot

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Emma Stone auditioned for “All That” as a possessed babysitter. However, she didn’t know that she was supposed to prepare for the audition beforehand and it became the shock of her life. She entered the casting director’s office and forcibly made up a character on the spot. She had to go like “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” when reading books to the kids.

#5 Daniel Radcliffe's gossiping derailed an audition

Source: Dimension Films

Before the audition for “The Cripple of Inishmaan”, Daniel Radcliffe went into the casting director’s office and was gossiping about someone who had remained nameless. The details were embarrassing but luckily, the actor overcame that.
In an interview with Buzzfeed, he shared, "[Then] someone came into the room as I was halfway through the story and I was like, I can't pull out now, I can't just stop telling the story, that would be a coward's way out. So I took a chance and I was continuing telling it. I got to the end and I was looking at him [the person who had come into the room], and I was like, 'The person I'm talking about is a very good friend of yours, isn’t he?' And he said, 'Yeah.' And then I had to do an audition with him."

#6 Peter Jackson called Jake Gyllenhaal "The worst actor he'd ever seen"

Source: Gordon Correll / Wikimedia/Creative Commons

Jake Gyllenhaal revealed that he had an absolute nightmare when he auditioned for the role of Frodo in “Lord of the Rings”. He was unaware to audition with an English accent so director Peter Jackson brutally said, “You are the worst actor that I have ever seen.”

#7 Eddie Redmayne flubbed his 'Star Wars' audition

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Many might not know that Eddie Redmayne had a chance to get the part of Kylo Ren in the “Star Wars” films. In an Interview with the Happy Sad Confused podcast, he called his “Star Wars” audition as pretty catastrophically bad. He said, “I went in and did this scene, and after seven times of trying to play… [Gold] was like, ‘Got anything else, Eddie?’ I was like, ‘No, I want out.’ ‘I think we’re going to have to agree to part on this one.’ I said, ‘Ok, that’s a childhood dream crushed.’"

#8 January Jones was asked to pole dance... without a pole

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January Jones had an audition for a role in the film “Coyote Ugly” but she wasn’t happy with the experience. She was asked to pole dance without a pole and it made her humiliate so much that she considered abandoning her show business dreams. But the producers "said something like, 'Honey, you did a great reading, but you've got no rhythm,'" Jones told The Hollywood Reporter. "I called my agent and said, 'I don't want to do this anymore.'"

#9 Tom Holland couldn’t stop laughing in his ‘Star Wars’ audition

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Tom Holland tried a role in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and it was actually a hilarious audition. He said, “I remember doing this scene with this lady, bless her, and she was just a drone… So I was doing all of this like, 'We gotta get back to the ship!' and she was just going, 'Bleep, bloop, bloop, bleep bloop.' I just couldn't stop laughing. I found it so funny. And I felt really bad because she was trying really hard to be a convincing android or drone or whatever they're called."