Eddie Redmayne’s audition to play a villain in Harry Potter went really wrong.
We are only a few weeks away from seeing Eddie Redmayne’s debut in the Harry Potter spinoff, Fanastic Beast and Where to Find Them.
However, several years ago Redmayne nearly appeared in a big-screen Harry Potter movie. The actor previously auditioned to play the character of Tom Riddle in Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets.
But Eddie Redmayne’s audition didn’t go very well, because not only did he not get the part but he didn’t even get a call back to inform him that he was not selected. Redmayne made this rather embarrassing revelation to Empire, when he was quizzed about his past links to the Harry Potter universe.
“I actually auditioned to play Tom Riddle while I was at university,” Redmayne freely admitted. “I properly failed and didn’t get a callback.”
What made it tough for Eddie Redmayne was that several of his friends actually did get roles in the Harry Potter franchise, which helped boost their acting careers. Redmayne explained, “A lot of my friends, like Domhnall Gleeson and Rob Pattinson, got their Harry Potter moment, but I never got mine.”
Before getting cast as Edward Cullen in the Twilight series, Robert Pattinson portrayed Cedric Diggory in both Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Domhnall Gleeson, who was priased for his performances in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Ex Machina in recent years, previously portrayed Ron Weasley’s older brother Bill in the Harry Potter film franchise.
Redmayne explained that he really wanted the role of Bill. “Over the years,” Redmayne noted. “I always hoped I might be cast as a member of the Weasley family – I’m color blind, but I’ve always been told there’s a tinge of red to my hair – but unfortunately not.”
This is not the first time that Eddie Redmayne, an Oscar winning actor, didn’t land a role in a movie because of a bad audition. Last year, he revealed while on The Graham Norton Show that he was lucky enough to get an audition in front of Peter Jackson for the role of Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. However, the audition didn’t go well when proceeded to scrunch up his body and use a very peculiar accent.
In additon, speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast back in November 2014, Redmayne revealed that his audition for a role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens was also laughably inept.
“My Star Wars audition was pretty catastrophically bad,” Redmayne admitted, via the Independent. “There’s this wonderful casting director called Nina Gold, who I absolutely love. I went in and did this scene and after seven times of trying to play a baddie, [Gold] was like, ‘Got anything else, Eddie?’ I said, ‘Okay, that’s a childhood dream crushed’.”
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