8 Actors Who Begged For Their Movie Roles (And 7 Who Don t Need To) | Blog | Life

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8 Actors Who Begged For Their Movie Roles (And 7 Who Don’t Need To)

9. Begged: Paddleboard In The Buff To Drum Up Interest In Your Career

Orlando Bloom is known for starring in not one but two box-office trilogies, The Lord Of The Rings and Pirates Of The Caribbean. So you’d think Bloom would become an in-demand actor or be followed around by paparazzi. That looks like the case, except that Bloom was never given parts for his comeback, as directors would pass on him. This is just bad luck, we guess. So, when Bloom found out that the acclaimed Mark Ruffalo was casting for a movie called Sympathy For Delicious, he wanted the role so badly that he literally begged for it. As he correctly pointed out, “I was coming from a place of desperation. I was desperate for an opportunity to break out of a preconceived idea of who I was, as an actor, based on finding myself in two of the biggest trilogies of all time.”

8. Doesn’t Have To Beg: But Jonah Hill Does Anyway

If you search Google, you’ll probably come to the conclusion that Jonah Hill begged for his role in 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street, for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. But several sources close to the Martin Scorsese film said that’s not so. Hill was given the funny sidekick role—he’s been in many of those, including the 21 Jump Street movies and Moneyball—without ever having to audition as Scorsese knew he would fit the part to a T. Now here’s where the mix-up might’ve happened. Hill did indeed audition, but that was his idea even after the role was handed to him, and despite the fact that Scorsese himself found the audition unnecessary. So there you have it. But there’s more. Hill wanted the part so badly that he agreed to get paid the SAG minimum wage in order to work alongside his friends, Oscar-winner DiCaprio, and renown director Martin Scorsese.

7. Begged: Michelle Pfeiffer Did Just That But Felt Humiliated

Michelle Pfeiffer has always found success in movies. Starting in the 80s, Pfeiffer starred in Grease 2, Scarface, Dangerous Liaisons and The Age of Innocence. Pfeiffer, like Amy Adams, picked their next roles to be different so they wouldn’t be typecast. This apparently worked. Pfeiffer was a huge fan of the 1960s gothic soap opera Dark Shadows when she was growing up. When she heard that Tim Burton would direct the movie in 2012, she lost her inhibitions and called the director whom she worked with on Batman Returns and requested the part. As she told Empire, “I didn’t want him to feel obligated but I told him I was a huge fan and I would love to do it if he was making it.” As Pfeiffer put it, the whole thing was embarrassing, but in the end, begging got her the part.

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