The actor who accidentally launched Jack Black’s movie career: “What’s his name?”
Sometimes, all it takes is one lucky break. In an industry as cutthroat and overcrowded as Hollywood, thousands of people are fighting for every opportunity. With far too many hopefuls and not enough eyes to see them all, success often comes down to pure chance.
A meeting with the right person, being in the right place at the right time, or, in Jack Black’s case, a famous fan, we knew the right people to talk to.
The story of how Jack Black landed one of his biggest roles is a perfect example of this. When he was eventually cast in 2000’s High Fidelity, the box office-smashing, timelessly beloved movie that grossed $47million, it felt like Black’s name was finally launched in a serious way.
This was in no way his first movie, and it wasn’t even that his role as Barry Judd was at all a stoic or serious one. It was simply that High Fidelity was the first truly notable role he’d taken on, giving him more screen time than any of the many small parts he’d had before. Here, he was seen and spotted, noted by other casting directors and quickly brought into other projects like his first leading man role in Shallow Hal.
However, Black wasn’t even going to audition. He hadn’t even heard about the project when his name was thrown into the ring by a fan in high places that the actor didn’t even know he had. At the time, Black was a relative unknown with a minor cult following thanks to his band, Tenacious D, and Bob Roberts, a mockumentary that was Black’s movie debut. Following a conservative politician on his bid for the senate, it’s a satirical take on politics that harboured a cultish fan base, and amongst that cult just happened to be Paul Rudd.
Rudd was already established. He’d been in Clueless, Romeo + Juliet, starred alongside Jennifer Aniston in The Object of My Affection and had roles in many TV shows. So, Rudd was invited into the big league audition rooms, like the one for High Fidelity.
But the story goes back a bit to when he first sat Bob Roberts. “A month after that movie, I went to this audition, and there was only one other actor auditioning for the part, and that was Jack,” Rudd recalled. As a big fan of the film, he freaked out; “I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s the fucking guy from Bob Roberts.’ And you were very nice.”
It kicked off what Black described as a decades-long “mutual-admiration society”. They’d bump into each other or see each other around, always being too shy or too nervous to properly connect, but always admiring each other’s work. So, when Rudd was in the audition room for High Fidelity, he put Black’s name forward.
“I said to Stephen Frears, ‘There’s this actor named Jack Black, and he’s the guy that should play this part, because he’s also a musician and he’s really funny’,” Rudd remembered, helping Black out even though he himself wasn’t cast in the movie in the end. But clearly, the director respected his opinion as Rudd said, “He was like, ‘What’s his name?’ He wrote it down!”
Soon after, Black got the call and got the role. “You launched my career!” he said, laying it all at Rudd’s feet.
