Johnny Depp never found joy in the Hollywood audition process. It was never the red carpets or the money that thrilled him about making it big, but it was finally being free from auditions. Why? Because he absolutely loathed them and always had. For Johnny Depp, the idea of being judged in a cold, quiet room by emotionless faces didn’t sit well, as he saw acting as a deeper form of connection.
A Flu Gave Johnny Depp His Breakthrough Role
Depp admitted he was terrible at auditions in his early years. He couldn’t force himself to perform for a panel of strangers staring blankly, and the environment made everything he believed about acting feel artificial.
“I was a young idiot,” Johnny Depp remembered at the AFI Festival in 2015, per Far Out Magazine. “I recognised that this process really had far less to do with performance and far less to do with connecting. So, in my mind I always thought, to put it in a very nice way, ‘This is horseshit.’ It’s an uncomfortable place to be where you feel you must be ‘on.’”
Ironically, his most successful audition came when he was far from his best. While being sick with a brutal flu, he was dragged into a last-minute reading for 21 Jump Street. He could barely think straight, which turned out to be a blessing. Besides, Depp was too exhausted to overthink. But somehow he breezed through it, and the next thing he knew, he was headed to Vancouver to start shooting. His foggy mind had finally saved him from himself.
Johnny Depp as Tommy Hanson // 21 Jump Street, 1987-1991 pic.twitter.com/U6elbKY8zA
— ❁ ❁ ❁ (@dnnydevito) April 1, 2016
The Coen Brothers Audition Johnny Depp Would Rather Forget
However, not every audition ended on such a lucky note. Johnny Depp once reached out to the Coen brothers, hoping to read for a role in one of their films. He doesn’t even remember which one it was. What he does remember is the sheer embarrassment. The audition, in his words, was mortifying, to the point where even the room felt still and heavy.
“I can only imagine the choices I must’ve made, but what I do remember very, very well was how loud the silence was after I finished and whatever I had done. I embarrassed myself to new heights,” the actor remembered.
The Silence That Still Haunts Johnny Depp
Depp stood frozen, awkwardly wondering how to leave the room as fast as possible. He suspected the Coens were thinking the same thing. A few mumbled thank-yous later, he escaped but never forgot how deeply he had embarrassed himself. He joked years later that if the Coens still remembered that day, they probably had no interest in ever working with him again.
However, to this day, no one knows for sure which role Depp had hoped to land.
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