10 More Excuses Actors Used For Blowing Major Movie Auditions

Long before he was frightening the life out of folks on the small screen as Stranger Things' Vecna or appearing as Gellert Grindelwald in the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts franchises, Jamie Campbell Bower was actually one of the many hopeful youngsters who tried out for the role of 'The Boy Who Lived'.

And after being told to prepare a little joke for his meeting with director Chris Columbus, this confident lad felt he had just the gag to secure one of the hottest parts in the business.

Bower recalled to the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via Insider) how he had heard a particularly filthy joke about why a fairy sits on top of a Christmas tree, with that cheeky joke focusing on the fact, you know, the plant was stuck up the thing's bottom. Wonderful.

Sure enough, when it came time to deliver his rude fairy story, this potential Harry Potter was met with complete and utter silence. Maybe the folks in attendance were merely cackling on the inside and ultimately felt the bold kid just didn't quite have the look of the world-famous wizard.

But in this future Grindelwald's opinion, it was that crude one-liner that royally F'd up his chances of putting on the legendary spectacles.