The Crazy Ways Actors Found Out They Were Cast In Movies

When Sony Pictures confirmed a release date for a planned remake of the 1995 family film favorite Jumanji, the internet blowback was fierce. This likely had a lot to do with timing; the news was reported by Variety barely a week before the one-year anniversary of Jumanji star Robin Williams' untimely death. Williams' performance is beloved by kids who grew up watching the tale of the mysterious jungle-themed board game, and those same kids turned adults seemed pretty concerned that their memories of Jumanji would be diminished. 

One of those now-adult Jumanji fans is singer/actor Nick Jonas. As a kid in growing up in Northern New Jersey, Jonas rented and watched a VHS copy of the adventure film "three or four times" in just one week, calling himself a "huge fan." When he got the call that he'd been cast in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, he was on tour—and in an eerie coincidence, Jumanji was actually playing on his tour bus when he learned he'd be playing a character drawn into the same mystical game that had captured his childhood imagination. "It was kind of serendipitous, the whole thing," Jonas later said of the incident. 

Luckily for him, and Jumanji's many fans, the movie Jones signed on for turned out to be a critical and commercial hit. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle picks up right where the first film left off, and even includes an homage to Williams' memorable character. 

Disney's search for the voice that would bring Moana, the titular star of their animated film, to life saw the studio auditioning hundreds of talented hopefuls throughout the Pacific Islands. 14-year-old Auli'i Cravalho won the role, and was actually the last person casting director Rachel Sutton saw. A few weeks later, she was asked to appear again for an official audition. Despite having no acting or singing credits whatsoever, Cravalho managed to have "a whole bunch of fun" with her high-stakes tryout.

That audition led to a taped callback where Cravalho was told she would have to do more ad-libbing. Director Ron Clements told her to repeat a take of dialogue, asking:  "is there was a way you could be happier still?"

Sutton explained that the directors told Cravalho, "Actually, maybe you could play it more like we're telling you that we're offering you the role." Director John Musker instructed her to "react as you would if you heard that news." Cravalho's mother explained that the cheeky production team had her daughter go through a few more takes before they gave her the good news. "We're not pretending now," they told her. "We want you to be the voice of Moana in our movie."

Daniel Craig has become one of Hollywood's most recognizable faces since his starmaking turn as film's most famous spy, James Bond. His profile is such that he likely has his pick of projects, but that hasn't made him complacent. Take the story of how Craig came to star in the 2017 drama Kings, in which he and Halle Berry play neighbors caught up in the civil unrest in Los Angeles following the 1992 acquittal of LAPD officers caught on tape assaulting Rodney King.

Craig had seen the 2015 film Mustang, which earned an Academy Award nomination for director Deniz Gamze Ergüven, and was "blown away by the beauty of it." So he decided to call her and simply ask if she would consider him for any future projects. 

Erguven said the cold call "was surreal...I'd been working on Kings for 11 years, and the part was perfect for him. Daniel has such extensive range." In the space of that phone call, Craig had asked for and landed his next leading role. And that's not the only time this method has worked for him. He reportedly landed a cameo role as a stormtrooper in Star Wars: The Force Awakens by calling director J.J. Abrams, and the role of Iago to David Oyelowo's Othello at New York Theatre Workshop after a phone call to director Sam Gold. 

When Jacob Batalon submitted a tape of himself to casting directors in response to an open call for an as-yet untitled Marvel project, he didn't think much of his chances—until he was contacted by a Marvel rep who told the film school undergrad they'd be flying him from New York to a Los Angeles for a screen test with Tom Holland for Spider-Man: Homecoming. The newbie actor said he was "shaking in his shoes" through the audition. 

Batalon was told by the casting director that he'd find out in two weeks, but the man who would go on to play Ned Leeds had a long wait ahead of him, just like his eventual Homecoming co-star Holland. "Another two weeks go by," said Batalon, "you hear nothing. Basically, two-and-a-half months go by and I'm like, 'Wow, this is the most depressing life period of my life.'"

That period ended on May 6, 2016, a date that altered the course of Batalon's life so dramatically he caused a public scene that he feared might get him arrested. While Batalon was walking through Bryant Park in New York, his manager called and told him "You're it, man. They're gonna make you Ned." As Batalon recalled, "I'm like, 'sir, thank you so much. I love you so much.' And I hung up the phone.  I started crying, I started screaming, I started yelling and running down the sidewalk. All these people are staring at me like whether or not to celebrate or call the police on me. It was crazy as hell."

Whoopi Goldberg has the uncanny ability to swing between dramatic and comedic roles and make it look easy, from her Academy-Award winning performance in the 1990 supernatural love story Ghost to her musical turn in 1992's Sister Act. Branching out into television, she's been the moderator of popular daytime talk show The View since 2007.

All this makes it hard to recall a time when Goldberg wasn't a part of the mainstream public consciousness, but in the early '80s, she was only known to theater audiences familiar with her one-woman show on Broadway. It was then that Goldberg heard Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple Alice Walker reading from her book on the radio. Goldberg was so moved by the material, she decided to write a fan letter to Walker informing the writer that if they ever made a film of her book, she'd even play "dirt on the floor" to be a part of it.

Goldberg received a reply on purple stationary from Walker herself, informing her that she was already aware of Goldberg's theater work and had sent her information to producers to be cast in Steven Spielberg's upcoming film adaptation. Spielberg called Goldberg soon afterward to inform her they wanted her for the lead role of Celie—a part that would mark her film debut, and earn her an Academy Award nomination.