Russell Crowe: My Best Friend’s Wedding director details actor’s disastrous audition

Crowe apparently failed to look Julia Roberts in the eye once and ‘read every line in a monotone’

PJ Hogan, the director of the 1997 romantic comedy My Best Friend’s Wedding, has reflected on Russell Crowe’s awkward audition for the film.

The movie starred Julia Roberts as a woman who realises she is in love with her best friend when he gets engaged to somebody else. While the best friend in question was ultimately played by Dermot Mulroney, Crowe was one of the actors who auditioned for the role.

In an excerpt from the book From Hollywood With Love, published in Vulture, the filmmaker said his first choice for the part had been Crowe, who he thought was “probably the most amazing actor I had ever encountered”.

To cast Crowe in the film, Hogan explained, he needed Roberts’s approval. He invited Crowe to a table read opposite Roberts and hoped there would be great chemistry between the pair.

“I don’t know what went wrong,” Hogan said. “It was one of the worst table reads I’ve ever experienced. Russell was seated opposite Julia. He gripped that script, and he stared at that script, and he didn’t look at her once.

“He read every line in a monotone. At one point, Julia was literally leaning over the table, staring, like, inches from Russell’s face, trying to make eye contact. And he wouldn’t look at her.”

Hogan added: “At the end of the reading, Russell came up to me and said, ‘I thought that went pretty well.’ And then I knew: Russell was not going to be in My Best Friend’s Wedding.”

The Independent has contacted Crowe’s representatives for comment.

Cameron Diaz, Dermot Mulroney and Julia Roberts in ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’ (Tri-Star/Kobal/Shutterstock)

Other actors in contention for the role were Matthew McConaughey, Edward Burns, and Matthew Perry, who briefly dated Roberts around that time.

Hogan said that Perry didn’t land the role because he “didn’t want them to break up while shooting”.