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    The Surprising Reason Emma Stone Was Cast in Crazy, Stupid, Love

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    Watch: Why Emma Stone Changed Her Name When She Joined the Screen Actors Guild

    Emma Stone‘s big move in her Crazy, Stupid, Love audition was to play it cool.

    In fact, the movie’s directors, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, picked the Bugonia star for the part of Ryan Gosling‘s love interest because Stone wasn’t thrown off by Gosling’s aura in her audition. 

    “Emma came in and Ryan said a line and he flubbed the line. He was reading with her offscreen, and Emma just, without missing a beat, was like, ‘Oh, you’re killing this. You’re doing great,'” Ficarra told People in an interview published July 29. “She just flipped him the s–t right then and there, and we were all just like, ‘Okay, that’s it. That’s the person.'”

    After the 37-year-old, then in her early 20s, instantly struck an easy rapport with the Notebook heartthrob, the directing team (also behind Whiskey Tango Foxtrot) wanted to “work with her desperately.”

    “We did this whole day of actresses reading with Ryan, and a lot of them were really good,” Ficarra admitted. “But then, once Ryan stepped into the room, they sort of were a little shaken,” despite the Oscar nominee “just being himself.”

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    And natural chemistry was a critical part of the romance between Stone and Gosling’s characters, Hannah Weaver and Jacob Palmer, respectively. After all, Weaver and Palmer pursue a relationship despite disapproval from Stone’s onscreen dad, Steve Carell (Cal Weaver), in the 2011 romantic comedy.  

    As such, Stone and Gosling—who would share the screen again in Gangster Squad (2013) and La La Land (2016), for which Stone won her first Oscar—had many magical moments on set. Still, their directors were able to name one scene that stands out. 

    “[The] Ryan and Emma and falling in love montage in bed,” Ficarra said, adding the sequence was “a really improvised thing” that fell together “with the cameras rolling for hours and letting them just run.”

    Photo by FOX Image Collection via Getty Images

    Requa, too, pointed to the pair’s improvisation as a memorable part of creating the movie, especially as the cast and crew now celebrate the film’s 20th anniversary.

    “They were just watching YouTube and seeing things, and then Emma would do an impersonation,” Requa recounted. “And we just kept saying, ‘Do that thing you were doing when we were standing over in video village the other day. Do that thing.’ And the crew and the actors thought we had lost our minds.”

    Keep reading to explore stars’ craziest stories from Hollywood auditions. 

    Photo by Stewart Cook/Variety/REX/Shutterstock

    Lea MicheleMichele almost didn’t make it to her Glee audition. “I got into a massive car crash outside of the Fox lot—completely totaling my car,” she recounted. “When I get into the room for my audition, I literally was still pulling pieces of glass out of my hair. They’re like, ‘Are you OK?’ I’m like, ‘I’m fine!'”

    Mike Marsland/WireImage

    Bryan CranstonThe Breaking Bad actor went method for one of his early auditions and it did not go well. “I was auditioning for a movie at Paramount. I was 21…it said [the character] was a cocky, self-centered, egotistical brat. I remember wearing cowboy boots and jeans, an open loose shirt,” he said. “The story took place in Texas or something, so I thought, ‘I’m going to go in there and be just this guy.’ I walked in like this and he stands up, holds out his hand and I go, psh. I sat down, kicked my boots up onto his desk and just kind of looked at him. He sat down, looked at my boots and said, ‘Get your boots off of my desk.’ And I went, ‘Oh s–t.’ Then I went psh. I just scoffed at him again…he goes, ‘GET YOUR BOOTS OFF MY DESK.'”

    VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images

    Felicity Huffman”I was going in for the ingenue, and I put on my dress, and I realized that I just wasn’t quite chesty enough. So I took toilet paper, and I stuffed my bra,” Huffman said. “Then I went in and did a terrible audition, for a movie, with the director and the fancy people in the room, and it just laid there like a dead fish and I was like, ‘Well, thank you so much.’ And I leaned down to get my bag and somehow, the arm of toilet paper—it was God’s joke— came and went out of my dress like that. So I had to pick up my ego and my toilet paper and walk out of the room.”

    Bryan Steffy/Getty Images for Wynn Las Vegas

    Chris EvansThe Captain America star once had a very awkward audition with Ben Affleck. “I went in [for Gone Baby Gone] and shook his hand, and the first thing I said was, ‘Hey, how ya doing? Am I gonna be okay where I parked?’ And he said, ‘Where’d you park?’ And I said, ‘At one of the meters.’ And he said, ‘Did you put money in it?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘I think you’ll be all right.’ From that moment, I just wanted to get the f–k out of the room.”

    Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images

    Drew BarrymoreBarrymore recalled, “Oh my God, I won’t say the movie, but they called me in on a Sunday with a casting assistant. They didn’t think I was worthy enough of even reading with the casting director. They did it in the basement, and it was a scene where I have to do this oral thing with this guy’s hand, and no one was there so I had to do it to myself. It was by far the most humiliating experience. I thought,’They think I’m such s–t that I’m here on a Sunday with the assistant, giving myself a finger in the mouth. This is a low point.'”

    Venturelli/WireImage

    Nikolaj Coster-WaldauThe Game of Thrones star had to act out a toilet scene where he pretended to have explosive diarrhea for his audition for the film The Other Woman.  “And the audition was on Skype,” he told E! News in 2014. “That was funny!”

    Kate Green/Getty Images for Prime Video UK

    Jake Gyllenhaal”I remember auditioning for The Lord of the Rings and going in and not being told that I needed a British accent,” the actor told The Hollywood Reporter. “I really do remember Peter Jackson saying to me, ‘You know that you have to do this in a British accent?’ We heard back it was literally one of the worst auditions.”

    Rob Latour/Variety/REX/Shutterstock

    Emilia ClarkeThe British brunette beauty ended her Game of Thrones audition by asking all of the HBO execs if there was anything else she could do, even “make them some tea or something.” “[Co-creator and showrunner] David Benioff suggested I do a dance…and so I did,” Clarke admitted. “I don’t know how to do it, but I did the funky chicken. And I kind of morphed into the robot.”

    Kevin Winter/Getty Images

    Carey MulliganFor Inside Llewyn Davis, Mulligan almost sent in an audition tape of herself wasted. “I was so excited so I did the audition after a dinner where I had had a few drinks,” the Brit beauty said. “My American accent is better after a few drinks and then I decided to eat something—it works for Brad Pitt, who eats all the time in films. It was a really drunk audition.” Luckily, Mulligan came to her senses and never sent the video.

    Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

    Lucy HaleThe Pretty Little Liars star auditioned for Dakota Johnson‘s role in Fifty Shades of Grey. “That audition was so uncomfortable!” she remembered. “”It’s exactly what you thought it would be: a big monologue but very, very sexual…there were some things that I was so embarrassed to be reading out loud, but it’s one of those things where you have to commit wholeheartedly or you’re going to make a fool of yourself.”

    Fred Duval/FilmMagic

    Shia LeBeoufFor Lars von Trier‘s Nymphomaniac, the actor once joked, “I sent him videotapes of me and my girlfriend having sex and that’s how I got the job.”

    Lars Niki/Getty Images for Museum of Modern Art, Department of Film

    Ryan Reynolds”I was never a great auditioner. But I had one where I had to sing, and I’m a nervous singer. I’m one of those people that…you know when you’re in the shower, and you’re like, ‘This is pretty good’? But once I get out into the real world, it’s just like my voice turns into a hammer that hits everybody in the face,” the Deadpool star told Variety. “So I did an audition where I had to sing, and it was pretty bad. It’s one of those auditions that was so bad that I look back and I think, ‘What if that tape surfaces at some point? That’ll be the death of me.’ Yeah. That was pretty awful.”

    Aitor Rosas Sune/WWD via Getty Images

    Kit HaringtonIn an interview with W magazine, Harington recalled his audition for Game of Thrones: “I had a black eye. I’d been in a fight the night before…I’d went into McDonald’s with this girl I had been dating, and it was late night and there was no seats. I asked this guy and this girl that he was with if we could sit at the same table as them. We sat down, and quite quickly he started being rude to the girl I was with, calling her names…He called her an ugly pig or something worse, and I said, ‘No you can’t, you can’t call her that. Get up…He’d been sat down the entire time so when he got up he just kept going. I realized I had to, at that point, I had to throw the first punch or else I’d look like a complete wimp. And I got batted. So I went to the Jon Snow audition with a black eye, which I think that man who punched me in the face may have helped me get the job, so thank you!”

    VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images

    Casey AffleckIt’s a good thing Affleck isn’t a quitter because his breakout role in 1995’s To Die For didn’t come easy. “I read six times,” Affleck recalled. “I auditioned for that movie over and over again for the casting director and then I finally met the director and I read for him once and he said, ‘That was good. Okay, you can do it,’ and I got the part like that and I was like, ‘That was easy!’…Note to self: ‘Don’t read for casting directors, just get into the room with the director.'”

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