The Martin Scorsese movie Drew Barrymore bombed her audition for: “The biggest disaster of my life”
Being a Hollywood actor means getting the chance to work with names you previously only dreamed of. Well, I’m not sure if Drew Barrymore can ever say that Hollywood was once a dream for her, because she was born into acting royalty and made her screen debut as a child. It’s all she has ever known.
Barrymore was thrust into the spotlight before she even knew any different, getting her big break as a seven-year-old in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. It certainly helped that the director was her godfather. Still, the young Barrymore certainly left an impression on audiences, and over the coming years, she secured roles in everything from the erotic thriller Poison Ivy to the classic horror comedy Scream.
Barrymore has spread herself across a range of genres, although these days you’re much more likely to find her presenting her own talk show, The Drew Barrymore Show. You might think that, due to her longstanding Hollywood connections, the actor would be able to easily land auditions with big names – or perhaps even get jobs without auditions – but that hasn’t always been the case.
In fact, Barrymore is convinced that legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese thinks she is, to quote the actor herself, “dog doo-doo”. It’s refreshing to hear actors as established as Barrymore express insecurity at times, because clearly even big stars find themselves fucking up occasionally, like when she utterly bombed her chance of appearing in a Scorsese flick.
Who wouldn’t want to work with Scorsese? The filmmaker has made some of the most acclaimed movies over the past decades, from Taxi Driver to Raging Bull, and there came a time when Barrymore wanted to be part of his cinematic world, too. She once recalled an audition for the terrifying 1991 thriller Cape Fear with one of the filmmaker’s assistants, presumably for the role played by Juliette Lewis, that left her feeling absolutely mortified.
Talking to Entertainment Weekly, the actor said, “Martin Scorsese will never call me. He probably thinks that I’m dog doo-doo. I never act, I just become people. But I really wanted to impress him, so I acted all over the place and it was just the biggest disaster of my life. I remember walking out of there just so humiliated. I don’t even know if they responded. And do you know what? They didn’t have to.”
Clearly, the secret to success is not changing what has always worked for you. When you’ve got a chance to work with someone like Scorsese, the pressure is understandable, but you can’t let it break you, otherwise you’ll end up falling and failing. That’s what happened to Barrymore, who has never found herself in a Scorsese movie, as much as she would love to be in one.
Perhaps one day the actor will give a successful audition for one of his movies, although for now it seems like she has taken a step back from performing, instead thriving on television, away from the pressure of cutthroat auditions and pleasing impressive directors.
