The worst audition of Russell Crowe’s career: “I don’t know what went wrong”
Auditions are by far and away one of the worst parts of being an actor. You have to queue up all day to perform lines from a script that you’ve had no time to prepare for in front of a panel of stern-faced, unflinching people who couldn’t give a damn about you. The process is entirely unnatural and how anyone gets through it is a complete mystery. Even the greats fall foul of this demonic exercise. Just ask Russell Crowe.
Following the monumental success of Gladiator, Crowe rarely needed to audition for anything, regularly getting offered parts in projects of all shapes, sizes, and quality. Prior to that, he was a jobbing actor just like everyone else. The New Zealand-born star had made an impact with the likes of L.A. Confidential and The Insider and had also appeared in Sam Raimi’s The Quick and the Dead and a number of movies based in Australia. One film he wasn’t in was the 1997 romcom My Best Friend’s Wedding, because he cocked the audition up to high heaven.
P J Hogan, the movie’s director, recalled wanting Crowe to be in the movie to Vulture. His wife, Jocelyn Moorhouse, had worked with the actor on a film called Proof. Hogan was very impressed by what he saw. “Russell was, I thought, probably the most amazing actor I had ever encountered,” he said. “I kind of knew Russell was going to be a really big star.” There was just one problem. Julia Roberts, the movie’s star, had a clause in her contract that she had to sign off on who her co-stars were. In Hogan’s own words, “No one was getting in this movie if Julia didn’t approve.”
Julianne, Roberts’ character, struggles to come to terms with her feelings for her best friend following his engagement to someone else. The friend in question, Michael, could have been played by Crowe with Roberts’ approval, so Hogan organised a table read between the two to see if there was any chemistry. Unfortunately, there wasn’t.
“I don’t know what went wrong,” Hogan pondered. “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. 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.”
Hogan’s premonition, predictably, came true. Crowe was not cast in the movie, as Michael or anyone else for that matter. That role went to Dermot Mulroney, who, in the grand scheme of things, went on to have half the career of the man he beat to the punch. The film itself was a massive success and is one of the better 1990s rom-coms, so Crowe really missed out by giving such a poor showing.
In the grand scheme of things, Crowe’s momentum wasn’t halted too badly by this fiasco. L.A. Confidential came out the same year as My Best Friend’s Wedding, which is what first drew major international attention to the young star. Apparently, he had better chemistry with Guy Pearce than he did with Julia Roberts.
