10 Movie Actors Who Really Couldn't Handle Casting Rejections
6. January Jones Almost Quit Movies After Her Disastrous Coyote Ugly Audition
January Jones came to prominence in the late 2000s after winning the role of Betty Draper on the hit TV series Mad Men, and subsequently appeared as Emma Frost in X-Men: First Class.
But almost a decade prior to landing her career-making part on Mad Men, Jones auditioned for a certain 2000 cult classic musical drama - the inimitable Coyote Ugly.
Years later, Jones admitted that she blew the audition so spectacularly as to almost quit the industry entirely. The audition required her to perform a pole dance for producer Jerry Bruckheimer...without an actual pole. She said:
"It was my second audition I think ever and I had done the reading for the acting part and then Jerry Bruckheimer wanted me to come in and dance...They said, 'You're gonna dance to Prince's 'Kiss'...You're gonna pole dance but there is no pole.' I kind of pretended there was a pole...and I just turned beet red. It was awful and he said something like, 'Honey, you did a great reading, but you've got no rhythm.' I called my agent and said I don't wanna do this anymore. This sucks."
The role of protagonist Violet Sanford was eventually played by Piper Perabo, and everything clearly worked out well enough for Jones in the end.
Hilariously she did run into Bruckheimer years later, however, and upon her mentioning the incident, he claimed to have no memory of it at all. Phew.