10 Biggest Lies Actors Told To Get Movie Roles
8. A Bunch Of Actors Have Falsely Claimed They Can Ride Horses...
Being able to ride a horse is a useful skill for an actor to possess. Even though horse riding scenes can be faked by using doubles and stunt teams, it's always more convincing if the actual actor can be seen jockeying their steed themselves.
Because of this, a lot of actors like to claim that they're extremely comfortable around horses, when, in fact, they're not.
Anne Hathaway revealed to Out that she did this in her audition for Brokeback Mountain. When director Ang Lee asked her if she could ride, she said yes, which was a big old lie. So, she had to learn, and eventually got to the stage where she was pretty good. Unfortunately, when she showed up to set, she was given a verbal command horse, and she couldn't make it move:
"I was given a horse on set without being told it was a verbal command horse, so I couldn’t figure out how to make it ride. And I went to a rehearsal in front of 300 extras, all of whom work in rodeos, and the horse wouldn’t do a damn thing I wanted it to. And at the end it threw me - in front of everyone."
Eddie Redmayne did something similar for 2005 feature-length miniseries Elizabeth I. He convinced director Tom Hooper that he could ride and ended up in a scene surrounded by 40 stuntmen on horses, without a clue what to do. When Hooper called action, the horse sprinted ahead wildly, and Redmayne almost killed himself.
Rachel McAdams also had a horse-related problem. For her film To The Wonder, the actress was required to interact with horses and buffalo, despite being scared of them both. She also had a horse allergy, something she didn't divulge to her director beforehand, instead telling everyone that she could do the film. Fortunately, she told The Guardian that she got away with withholding this key piece of information:
"My first day of the shoot I was in the middle of a corral with 50 horses who had never before been touched by humans. It's like when people ask if you can ride for a medieval film – you think you can just get away with it. And I did, somehow!"
There's an important lesson here folks: if you can't ride a horse - or you're allergic to horses - just make things easier and let someone know, yeah?