Photo: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic; Neil Mockford/FilmMagic
Patricia Arquetteis the first to admit she’s bad at nailing auditions.
The Oscar winner, 54,toldVarietyat theSAG AwardsSunday night about the time she tried out for 1996’sJerry Maguirealongside star Tom Cruise — and things didn’t go too well.
“I’m a notoriously bad auditioner,” said Arquette. “Everyone was saying, ‘Oh, this is just a formality. You’re gonna read withTom Cruisefor Jerry Maguire. But this is your part, you’ve got it.’ And I blew it.”
“I actually think she was better for it, and she was great,” she said.
Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger inJerry Maguire.Everett Collection
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
There’s another role that got away:The Doors, Oliver Stone’s 1991 rock ‘n’ roll film starringVal KilmerandMeg Ryan, apparently was close to Arquette’s at one point.
“I just heard on this podcast the other day our friend sent us that the casting director, thatBrad Pittand I were her choice, we were the first ones who came in to read forThe Doors, and she was like, ‘Why are we having any more auditions? They were perfect.’ I didn’t even know,” she toldVariety. “There’s a lot you don’t know. As an actor, you gotta go in and do your best, take a chance, have fun, and you gotta let it go because it’s really out of your hands.”
Arquette added that she’s a “terrible auditioner” and called the process “not easy.”
Back in 2019, during a conversation forVariety’s “Actors on Actors"series, Arquette toldJulia Robertsthat she auditioned for her part in 1990’sPretty Woman.
RELATED VIDEO: Jamie Lee Curtis Shares the Special Item She Plans to Bring in Her Purse on Oscar Night
“So many, many, many years ago, one of my early auditions was for a movie called ‘3,000.’ Most people don’t know that ‘3,000’ was the originalPretty Womanscript. And the ending was really heavy,” Arquette recalled, as Roberts added of the original ending, “Threw her out of the car, threw the money on top of her, as memory serves, and just drove away,leaving her in some dirty alley.”
“Right. So it really read like a gritty art movie. When you first read it, it was that incarnation?” said Arquette.
source: people.com
