Ten of the wildest film and TV auditions: From The Favourite to the Fantastic Four

Actors have arrived expecting to run lines, but ended up panting, sculpting imaginary force fields and running around like wolves

Emma Stone had a weird audition for 'The Favourite', and acted one out in 'La La Land', pictured here

Usually taking place in drab meeting rooms, auditions can be stilted affairs. Beige walls and harsh lighting aren’t exactly conducive to great performances, and it’s usually down to the actor or director to liven things up and get the creative juices flowing.

For this year’s Oscar dark horse, The Favourite, actors Emma Stone and Nicholas Hoult were asked by director Yorgos Lanthimos to moan, hum, and imagine force fields as they competed against other actors for their roles.

Here we look at that unorthodox audition process, and other weird and wonderful ones from film and TV history:

Mads Mikkelsen’s Fantastic Four audition was all about having “long arms”

Mads Mikkelsen at the Doctor Strange UK premiere (Getty)

Auditioning for the part of Mister Fantastic, Mikkelsen recalled to Shortlist how he left the room saying: “I can’t do it. It’s not about you. I’m sorry, this is wrong.”

When this was reported as him “storming out”, he later clarified what had happened to ScreenGeek, only added a new layer of intrigue to the audition.

“I didn’t walk out. When I left it, I was just like – this is crazy. I don’t even have long arms. What am I doing in here? The audition was only about long arms. No lines. I felt a little funny.”

Mister Fantastic does, in fairness, posses the power of superhuman elasticity, but it was perhaps a little hard on Mads expecting him to stretch his arms without the help of VFX.

Mikkelsen added of bad auditions: “We’ve all been there. We all show up and it’s a little office room with a desk and they want you to do a scene where you maybe have two lines... and you’re hiding behind a palm tree that’s not there. It’s like, ‘Guys couldn’t you have picked a different scene? This is f**king mad.’ You feel like an idiot.”

ET's Henry Thomas gave an intense, tearful audition aged 10

“OK, kid, you got the job,” a casting director says off camera the second Henry Thomas’s taped audition for ET ends, and it’s hard to imagine him facing much dissent.

The 10-year-old was quickly briefed on the setup for the reading – a Nasa representative coming to his house to take away his alien best friend – and tapped into protagonist Elliot’s mindset instantly. His tearful audition is unbelievably raw and carries an emotion that actors three times his age would be delighted with.

Hugh Laurie’s American accent was so good it fooled the House director

(Getty) (Getty Images)

No more British actors, Bryan Singer decreed while searching for a Dr Gregory House, the director having been disappointed with their American accents. Accordingly, the casting call was tweaked to specify that it was a “quintessentially American person” being sought.

When Hugh Laurie’s audition tape came in, Singer hired him on the spot, turning to his crew and saying: “See, this is what I want: an American guy!”

Only Laurie is, of course, a Brit, and one who had made a career playing quintessentially British characters at that. His American accent in House is still regarded as one of the very best from a non-American actor, and he held it unwaveringly across eight seasons.

Margot Robbie was worried Leonard DiCaprio would sue her for assault after her Wolf of Wall Street audition

(Paramount)

Margot Robbie was still a soap actress best known for Neighbours when she had her daunting audition for The Wolf of Wall Street.

“In my head I was like: ‘You have literally 30 seconds left in this room and if you don’t do something impressive nothing will ever come of it,’” she told Harper’s Bazaar in 2015. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance, just take it.’ And so I start screaming at him and he’s yelling back at me. And he’s really scary. I can barely keep up.

“And he ends it saying: ‘You should be happy to have a husband like me. Now get over here and kiss me.’ “So I walk up really close to his face and then I’m like, ‘Maybe I should kiss him. When else am I ever going to get a chance to kiss Leo DiCaprio, ever?’

“But another part of my brain clicks and I just go... Whack! I hit him in the face. And then I scream, ‘F**k you!’ And that’s not in the script at all. The room just went dead silent and I froze.”

Robbie was terrified that DiCaprio might sue, but instead he suggested she slap him again. It was “a thunderclap of a slap on the face,” director Martin Scorsese remembers, “an improvisation that stunned us all.”

The Omen‘s evil child Damien was cast thanks to a boy kicking the director in the groin

(20th Century Fox) ((20th Century Fox))

In his search for a boy sinister enough to play Damien, the embodiment of Satan, The Omen director Richard Donner had the auditionees act out the scene where Damien attacks Katherine at a wedding. He suggested the kids simply “come at him” – fight him – an audition process unlike to be well received in 2018.

One Harvey Stephens immediately began clawing at Donner’s face and kicked him in the groin. The story goes that the director said to dye the kid’s hair black and cast him as Damien immediately.

The Favourite actors sang for their supper, and hummed and panted too

“I auditioned for Yorgos [Lanthimos], he had me pant like I was giving birth throughout the lines,” Emma Stone said ahead of The Favourite‘s bow at New York Film Festival. “I think he just does this to everyone.”

She was half right – co-star Nicholas Hoult’s audition for the director was bizarre too, but didn’t involve any panting.

Instead, “Yorgos asked me to hum while the person I was with said their lines, and then I had to imagine force fields around the room and sculpt them into things,” Hoult explained.

“There were lots of games like that throughout rehearsal as well. I’m not sure how it affects the performance.”

Gloriously, Lanthimos added: “I have no idea either.”

Val Kilmer shot an eight-minute video of himself singing The Doors songs

By all accounts, Val Kilmer already had the role of Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s The Doors film in the bag. But just to make sure, he sent over an eight-minute video he’d shot of himself “singing and looking like Jim Morrison at the various stages of his short life.”

When the surviving members of The Doors later heard Kilmer sing, they apparently couldn’t tell whether it was the actor or Morrison himself.

January Jones had to pole dance without a pole

(AMC (AMC)

Long before she played Betty Draper in Mad Men, January Jones auditioned for Coyote Ugly, which she described as “one of the worst moments in my entire life”.

It wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect dance experience given the nature of the film, but after the dialogue reading, producer Jerry Bruckheimer “wanted me to come in and dance ... on top of the table,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.

“They said, ‘You’re going to dance to Prince’s ‘Kiss.’ You’re going to pole dance, but there is no pole.’ And I just turned beet red. It was awful, and he said something like, ‘Honey, you did a great reading, but you’ve got no rhythm.’ I called my agent and said, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’”

Rory McCann has his sister’s bad printing to thank for landing him The Hound in Game of Thrones

McCann was a struggling actor paying the bills by landscaping gardens and painting bridges when he auditioned for Game of Thrones.

His sister printed his lines for the audition, only she accidentally missed off a large chunk of the monologue actors were asked to deliver, including a crucial bit about The Hound’s scarred face.

McCann had to scramble to understand his character in time for the audition, and overcompensated for his lack of preparation with unbridled anger.

“When I walked into the room, I knew I had to go crazy,” he recalled, describing the audition as a “fluke”. The screen test was posted on YouTube and went viral, thanks to his abrupt, menacing, and possibly deafening bark: “Look at me!”

Tom Holland had to run around as a wolf

“Thank you, that was great,” Andy Serkis said, ”Now do it as a wolf.”

Tom Holland described his audition for Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle as the “strangest” he has ever done. Apparently Holland repeated his performance, but with his hands cupped above his head like wolf ears this time. He didn’t get the part.