10 Excuses Actors Used For Blowing Major Movie Auditions

The Role

The specific part has never been confirmed, but it's almost certainly either protagonist Rob (Michael Stahl-David) or comic relief supporting character Hud (T.J. Miller).

The Audition

Having previously had a small part in J.J. Abrams' Mission: Impossible III, the director invited Aaron Paul to audition for Cloverfield, which Abrams was a producer on.

But Abrams ended up throwing Paul off his game big-time with a feat of possibly inadvertent trolling.

While shooting Mission: Impossible III, Paul learned that Abrams had a fondness for magic tricks, and when Paul mentioned this to him, the director convinced him to try and perform a card trick in front of the entire cast, including Tom Cruise.

When it came time to audition for Cloverfield, though, he asked ahead of time whether Abrams would be there, and was told he wouldn't be attending. But lo and behold, Abrams indeed turned up and caused Paul to tank the whole thing. In his own words:

"I walk in and J.J.'s there. He brings up the magic trick story and I lose my train of thought. I have three pages of a monologue that I memorised. That was my audition... He has me tell the story about the card trick and now I'm super awkward.

He's like, 'Now let's get started,' and I start doing this monologue and I completely lose my train of thought and I stop and I apologise to J.J. He's like 'That's okay. Thanks for coming in.' I'm like 'See ya' and I walked out. It was awful."

Thankfully Breaking Bad blew up the very same year that Cloverfield was released, so it all worked out swimmingly for the actor in the end.