8 Embarrassingly Bad Movie Auditions Starring Famous Actors

Amazingly, they weren't all rejected!

Megan Fox
Paramount

Over the years, the film industry (and the Internet) has gifted us some truly wonderful movie auditions.

From Henry Thomas in E.T. to Daisy Ridley in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, it's often easy to see why an actor lands a role, whether they're just a perfect fit for the material or they completely shine in the handful of minutes they're given.

But, very occasionally, the Internet gifts us some truly terrible ones too - video proof that even talented, popular actors are capable of having a bad day at the office, just like the rest of us.

Only, your embarrassing moments probably won't end up on YouTube for the whole world to see. And laugh at.

8. Gwyneth Paltrow (Jurassic Park)

Role? Ellie Sattler.

Did she get the part? No.

If there's one positive Gwyneth Paltrow can take away from this audition it's that her failure to land a role in Jurassic Park didn't really affect the success of her movie career.

She simply isn't right for this part. Here, she's too much the innocent, sweet little girl as opposed to tougher, more hardened likes of Laura Dern, who eventually won the role, and Helen Hunt, who also auditioned.

She sounds like she doesn't understand the words she's reading, when in reality, her character should be fluent in this type of scientific conversation - and it's all capped off with the Oscar-worthy line "maybe they're weird. Maybe dinosaurs are weird."

What a wonderful, insightful analysis.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.