Taylor Swift's Unfortunate Les Misérables Audition Consisted Of Brown Teeth And Garlic Breath
For the countless aspiring actors trying to jumpstart their careers in Hollywood, one of the most important steps needed for success is knowing how to nail an audition. This process is as much nerve-racking as it is essential for an actor to get that much-anticipated call informing them that they've been hired. However, when it comes to performers that are already successful or famous, any nerves for an upcoming audition must come from a different place, other than the ambition to thrust themselves into the public eye. Whether it's wanting to impress an admired director or a needed career shift, these stars can still feel those butterflies in their stomach before taking on a screen test.
For Taylor Swift, a mega-star in the music world, her anxious feelings connected to an upcoming audition for the 2012 film "Les Miserables." Specifically, they came from her admiration for actor Eddie Redmayne. While talking about this experience on "The Graham Norton Show," Swift explained, "Basically I was up for two roles...I had the look of Cosette and the range vocally of Éponine..." Falling in the middle of these two different characters led Swift to believe she had no chance of getting either role. But, that didn't stop her from auditioning with one of her favorite actors. "This isn't an experience I'm going to get again in my life," she recalled. However, that experience did not go anywhere near how Swift had hoped.
Both Swift and Redmayne had reasons to stay far away from each other
Back during the casting process of the highly anticipated film adaptation of the musical "Les Miserables," Taylor Swift jumped at a chance to head to London for a screen test with one of her favorite actors, Eddie Redmayne. However, People reports that Swift's expected simple audition turned out to be much more involved. "When I got there they put me in full 19th Century street urchin costume and told me they were going to paint my teeth brown and I was like, 'You are going to do that after I meet Eddie Redmayne right?'" she recalled. Surely, that's not the best look when you're about to meet one of your favorite actors.
When Swift finally got to her screen test with Redmayne, she was in full 19th-century gear, complete with dirty teeth. "When I met Eddie I didn't open my mouth to speak," she related. As for Redmayne himself, who was also a guest on this "Graham Norton Show" segment, the close-contact moment was something he had not anticipated either. "My overwhelming memory of it is that I'd just been to Pizza Express beforehand and I'd had some garlic dough balls," he remembered. "They had us on the floor, like singing sweet nothings into each other and all I knew is I just had garlic breath."
Well, it's safe to say that these two distracting factors probably killed any potential chemistry director Tom Hooper and producers were looking for. In the end, Samantha Barks was chosen for the role of Éponine, and Swift was left with a funny story to tell.