Casting is probably the most secretive process in the filmmaking industry. It is the most competitive process actors have to go through. Every actor for any film has to go through a strenuous process of reading their lines in front of many producers, which can be an extremely daunting task even for the most seasoned performers. Auditioning and reading lines to a bunch of cast members, is not exactly the easiest task, especially when you are not aware of what the casters are looking for. So here is a list of actors who had to go above and beyond the normal protocol to land their roles.
Vilhelm Blomgren
For the horror movie Midsommar, actor Blomgren, had to give an extremely weird kind of an audition. Before his audition even started with the casting director, he was asked to walk through the woods for almost 30 meters right before his audition.
Harvey Stephens
The 1976’s Omen is one hell of a horror flick and made itself known across many fandoms. However, in search of the perfect creepy-looking kid to don the mantle of the evil antichrist, the director had a really weird audition scene prepared for the attendees. Director Richard Donner gave the scene of Damien (the evil kid) attacking Katherine (another character of the movie), to make certain he got the right candidate for the job. Donner requested the auditionees to pretend that he was Katherine, and asked them to physically attack him.
Nicholas Hoult
Anyone who has seen ‘The Favourite’, ‘The Lobster’, and ‘The Killing of a Sacred Deer’, will ascertain that all of Yorgos Lanthimos’s movies are downright weird. And as it turns out, so does the way he casts for his actors. Yorgos asked Nicholas Hoult, who played the lead in The Favourite, to make a humming sound while another actor auditioned for his role in a particular scene. The other weird thing that Yorgos asked Hoult to do is imagine the room being filled with force fields and then imagining that the force fields taking on different shapes.
Emma Stone
Emma Stone’s character in ‘The Favourite‘, also meant that she was asked to do something weird during her audition, just like Nicholas Hoult by Yorgos Lanthimos. During her audition, she was asked by Yorgos to gasp heavily between her lines, similar to how women breathe during pregnancy. The weird thing was that the entire narrative did not include Emma even getting pregnant.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
The Game of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays the character of Mark, in the movie ‘The Other Woman’. During the audition of the movie, Nikolaj had to perform a scene that entailed him consuming large amounts of laxative, causing him a troublesome time in a public bathroom stall. Looking at his choice in the movie, it seemed like he had aced the audition.
Keira Knightley
For the movie ‘A Dangerous Method’, Keira Knightley was requested by director David Cronenberg to show him her weirdest sex face. Keira was contacted by David over skype and requested to do an audition via video call, which was kind of really weird as between the call the screen froze.
George Lazenby
George Lazenby was not a known name in the Hollywood circle, before his debut in 1969’s James Bond movie, ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’. For the role of Bond George was put through a series of tests to ensure he was the right person for the job. From pitting him against stuntmen to find out his flight capabilities, the weirdest audition was however the “sexuality test”. George was put in an apartment with multiple girls and told to have intercourse with them, while a person watches him perform.
