13 Stars Who Lied Their Way Into Famous Roles
Early in her career, the Crazy Rich Asians star tried to land a role as an extra in a project. The extra was responsible for yelling out one line: "Run Away"...but it needed to be done in Korean. Despite not knowing how to speak the language, the Taiwanese-American actor learned the line phonetically and delivered it. When asked to improvise in Korean, she could only make nonsensical sounds.
"I'm not Korean, and I don't speak Korean," Constance said in a 2018 The Late Show with Stephen Colbert interview. "I speak Mandarin Chinese. But it was only like one word, like two words. So, you know, I asked a friend, and they told me, I learned it phonetically and I put all of my heart into that one line."
Constance revealed she doesn't remember how to say the line, because the audition turned a little tricky. "No, it's like a traumatic experience. Because what happened next was the casting director was like, 'That was so great. Can you improv a little in Korean?' And I said, Yep!' And then I just made noises."
Liam Hemsworth lied about his volleyball skills to star alongside Miley Cyrus.
Liam starred alongside his ex, Miley, in the 2010 romance The Last Song. He played a popular beach volleyball player named Will Blakelee, but in reality, Liam didn't known how much about the sport. "I can't play volleyball in real life," Liam told Tribute Movies in 2010 about the differences between his character and himself. "I'm really bad."
"The volleyball was the most intense [training]. We were playing about three times a week for a couple of hours a day. Yeah, it was really tough."
In another interview with NBC San Diego, Liam revealed one of the most challenging moments came when they had to film a tournament scene in front of 300 fans. He was meant to play against extras willing to let him win, but it wasn't as easy as Liam thought."They made us look stupid," Liam laughed about the other team. "I'd throw a spike down and expect to get a point, turn around to high-five my buddy. And I'd look back and the ball was coming back." At one point, he even asked director Julie Ann Robinson for a stunt double because he was having trouble perfecting the skills, but he eventually "got better.""It takes a lot of skills to play that game, and I didn't have them," Liam added. "We did good against the extras who hadn't played before."
Gillian Anderson deceived casting directors with her age to win the role of Dana Scully on The X-Files.
"I lied about my age on the first audition," Gillian told NPR in a 2020 interview. "So I said that I was 27. So that's how you get that job." But even though series creator Chris Carter was convinced he'd found his leading lady, Gillian revealed the network wasn't. So, they kept bringing in actors to replace her, including Cynthia Nixon and Jill Hennessy.
"But I was sent in on an audition, like any other audition," she continued. "And then kept getting called back and, eventually, you know, went to network with all the other girls who were also trying out for the role, going to network and getting to read with David Duchovny, who they had by that point chosen as Mulder. But they weren't convinced - Chris Carter, who created the series, was convinced that I was his Scully, but the network wasn't."
"And so all of a sudden, they started to fly in all these other actresses from the theater community in New York. And I'd been living in LA for a little while when I did this audition and had been living in New York beforehand, auditioning with all these young women in the theater community. And all of a sudden, they were being flown in because I wasn't good enough for The X-Files (laughter). And so I was auditioning, suddenly, with Jill Hennessy and Cynthia Nixon and all these women."She landed the role. Gillian was actually 24 at the time.
Ben Hardy claimed to be a talented musician on his resume.
Before landing the role of Roger Taylor, the former drummer in the rock band Queen, in the 2018 biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, Ben said he told a "big lie" just to be considered for the gig. 'I worked with [director] Bryan Singer before on X-Men," he said in a 2018 People interview. "And I sent him an email when I heard about [Bohemian Rhapsody] and in the nicest way possible was like, 'Can I do this?'"
'He had reservations based upon the fact that he wanted the person who played Roger Taylor to be able to play the drums because you can cheat the other instruments with camera angles, but in the wide shots you can see if the drum is out of sync. So I told him I could play the drums — which I couldn't at the time.'
Ben was expected to send in a tape of himself playing the drums to a Queen song, so in order to prepare for the lie, he enlisted in a grueling 2-week training session. He recruited a local drummer to teach him and dealt with 10-hour practice days just to nail the techniques. 'I wanted the job really bad. Who doesn't want to play a rock' n roll star? So I told him a little white lie — slash — big lie, that I could play the drums. So he was like, 'Great, can you put this song on film for me to show to the producers?' I went away in a massive panic. There wasn't enough time. I bought the cheapest drum kit I could find and found a drum teacher locally, and was like, 'Look, here's the deal: I need to learn to play this song as soon as possible. What can you do?'"
'Bryan messaged me and was like 'Where's the video?' I was like, 'Here is the moment, gonna have to do it, so I put it on film and just prayed,' he recalled. And it worked!
Drew Barrymore revealed that when she was working as a child actor, it was very common for people to lie about their talents, and she was no different.
During an April 2024 episode of her daytime talk show, The Drew Barrymore Show, with special guest Valerie Bertinelli, the two discussed growing up in Hollywood, and the lies they'd list on their headshots to get an audition.
'You'd get an 8×10 glossy," Drew said. "And on the back of the 8×10 glossy was your resume and you would have to say, 'I can sing, I can tap' — all lies. I couldn't do any of the things it said that I could do. It was like singing, dancing. You put like all your skillsets as a child that you don't really have.'
Valerie admitted to doing the same thing: 'You can roller-skate. You can skateboard,' she said. 'And that got me in trouble because then I did a movie in London — something about Charles Dickens going back and forth in time — and I had to ride a skateboard. And it said I could ride a skateboard. I'm like, 'Oh my God. I actually have to ride a skateboard.''
Idris Elba pretended to be American during his auditions for The Wire.
Idris Elba revealed in a 2019 Hot Ones interview that Alexa Fogel, The Wire's casting director, told him to pretend he was American, rather than British, because creator David Simon didn't want any non-American actors cast in the Baltimore-based series. He kept up the act for a while, until it came to his fourth audition, where he was asked about his childhood.
"My parents told me not to lie," Idris admitted. "You gotta look someone in the eye and be honest. I have lied. It's never worked out for me." So, he did the respectable thing and told the truth. "Don't fire Alexa, she told me not to tell you guys." Although he initially went out for the role of Avon Barksdale, Simon gave him the role of Stringer Bell instead. Avon was ultimately played by Wood Harris.
Anne Hathaway also lied about her horse-riding skills when she starred as Lureen Newsome in the 2005 film Brokeback Mountain, mainly because, apparently, they were nonexistent.
Anne told Out, "My parents have given me a lot of gifts in my life, and one of them is: If you're ever asked if you can do anything, say yes. You can learn anything in two weeks if you're motivated enough." She told director Ang Lee that she knew how to ride in order to book the role. "So I'd never been on a horse, and I replied, 'Oh yeah, I'm a really good rider.' So I knew I had to learn to ride, and I got really, really, really good."
Despite learning the ins and outs of horseback riding, it didn't stop Anne from having an embarrassing moment on set, when the horse refused to listen to her commands.
"I went to a rehearsal in front of 300 extras, all of whom work in rodeos," she continued. "And the horse wouldn't do a damn thing I wanted it to. And at the end, it threw me in front of everyone."
George Clooney went to extremes to try to earn his SAG-AFTRA card, the membership that signifies an actor's affiliation with the Screen Actors Guild.
When George was still a budding actor in Hollywood, he was eager to get his credentials. To expedite the process, he lied to a casting director about his SAG status in order to boost his chances of starring in the project. George told her he had worked on the movie Cat People.
Well, funny enough, the casting director for this project just so happened to be the same casting director for Cat People. She knew she didn't hire him for that film, but seemingly impressed by his tenacity, she gave him a role in a different project. Unfortunately, that film was never made. Despite the movie getting canned, it ultimately earned George his SAG card.
Mila Kunis shaved several years off to land the role of Jackie Burkhart in That '70s Show, but the producers eventually figured it out. She was just 14 (a freshman in high school) at the time of her audition.
"Legally, I was 14, but I told them I was a little bit older. I told them I was gonna be 18," Mila said in a 2012 interview with Jay Leno. "It's not technically a lie, because at one point, given all things went right, I was gonna be 18."
Mila admitted to having a fake ID at the age of 16. She went by the name Jiffy Perez on the ID, who was listed as being 21. She revealed the producers found out about her real age, but it didn't cause any issues, so she continued filming.
Jason Isaacs claimed to be a big fan of The White Lotus despite never watching a single episode.
'I'd said that it was my favorite show, that I thought it was a work of brilliance, and that Mike was a genius,' Jason said of The White Lotus to Decider. 'Now, I do think Mike's a magnificent writer and director, because I've followed him since I was at Sundance when he first emerged with Chuck & Buck. I'd watched everything he'd done film-wise ever since, but I hadn't seen The White Lotus. So, of course, I watched it, and I became a huge fan after the fact.'
'I told him what a huge fan of White Lotus I was, what utter genius it was, and 'how the richness of the characters,' and all the other things I picked up from the reviews I'd read because I'd never seen a frame of it,' Isaacs recalled to Collider.
'I watched all of them in like a day and a half,' he told People magazine. 'I basically sat and stewed in my own filth, watched it, and realized why people had made such a fuss. And then I was a fan.'
Sadie Sink exaggerated her roller-skating skills when asked about her background for another challenging sport.
Before earning the role of Max in Netflix's Stranger Things, Sadie claimed she was a confident rollerblader, to make up for the fact that she didn't know how to skateboard. "They wanted a girl that had skateboard experience," Sadie told Coveteur. "And I didn't have skateboarding experience at all. They asked me, 'Oh, do you have any rollerblading experience?' I was like, 'Uh sure I do,' which was technically not a lie because I have rollerbladed before. In reality, I probably haven't [roller]skated for a year.'
She recalled panicking after seeing a pair of skates in the corner of the audition room, but it turns out she didn't end up needing to use them.
Paul Mescal's agent didn't want him to lose out on the role of Connell in Normal People, so he told a little lie about the status of Paul's driver's license.
"My agent was like, 'We are not losing this job over you not being able to drive," Paul told Entertainment Weekly. "'So, I'll tell production that you can, and in the meantime, you go off and rattle through as many lessons as you can.'"
And if you're a fan of the show, then you probably remember seeing Paul behind the wheel quite frequently, so it looks like the lessons paid off.
Lastly, Phoebe Dynevor showed immense enthusiasm for riding horses while preparing to star as Daphne Bridgerton in the hit Netflix historical drama, despite being scared of them.
"And I've always said — I don't know why — that I didn't like horses and was scared of them," Phoebe told Glamour in 2021. "But in the audition, when they asked me, 'Have you ridden a horse before?' I was like, 'Yeah, I'm amazing. I've ridden so many horses. I'd be perfect for this role!'"
But after a few lessons, she learned to love it more than she anticipated: "I actually loved horseback riding by the end of it and would love to get back on a horse as soon as possible, so that was fun. I felt very much ready to enter the marriage market by the time I finished with everything."
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