Hollywood stars Jack Black and Paul Rudd have laughed off their most awkward audition fails, telling RTÉ Entertainment that some still haunt them.
The duo, who reunite on the big screen in Sony Pictures' wild jungle adventure Anaconda - a nod to the 1997 cult classic starring Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube - revealed that not every screen test went smoothly on their road to stardom.
Ant-Man star Paul Rudd recalled a "terrible" but hilarious audition inspired by none other than Danny DeVito.
"I heard a story that Danny DeVito got the role in Taxi because he went into the room as Louie De Palma, jumped on a table, threw the script down, and said, 'Who wrote this?!' He was already acting the part. When I was starting out, I thought, 'That's how you do it!'
"So I went into an audition for a tough-guy role and was very rude to the casting director," he explained. "I took out a cigarette - it wasn't lit - threw it on her carpet and stubbed it out. As I left, I thought, 'I'm not going to get that part!'
"It was terrible. I called my agent as I was leaving, and she picked up and immediately said, 'What did you do?' The casting director had already called her and said, 'Get this psycho away from me!' That one definitely backfired on me," he laughed.
School of Rock star Jack Black also shared a comical audition mishap, explaining how he thought he was being cast as a general - only to realise he'd completely misunderstood the situation.
"I remember auditioning for a Civil War drama, which was a big departure for me because I was doing mostly clowny kind of things," he said. "When I got there, I thought I was auditioning for the role of a general… a general meeting! I didn't realise it was just a general meeting. And I remember thinking, 'I don't think I'm old enough to play a general convincingly...'" he shared.
Directed by Tom Gormican, Anaconda is a meta‑reimagining of the 1997 creature feature.
Rudd stars as Ronald 'Griff' Griffen, a supporting actor and lifelong friend of Doug (Black). Amid a midlife crisis, Griff leads his crew into the Amazon to shoot an amateur remake of their favourite cult film - only to discover that a real giant anaconda lurks in the jungle.
"It's really about a group of people ill-equipped to do a reboot, and then things go sideways. It's an original story, but it uses the original Anaconda in a very meta way," Rudd said.
Black enthused that "there's a lot of love between these characters", but "when things go sideways, that's when the movie really kicks into overdrive".
He added: "It's deliciously bonkers, and I think that describes it perfectly."
Anaconda, also starring Thandiwe Newton, Steve Zahn, Daniela Melchior, and Selton Mello, hits cinemas on 26 December.
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