Actress Reese Witherspoon revealed during a recent interview that she had once “bricked” an audition with Academy Award winner Robert De Niro — and to make matters worse, when he saw her again a decade later, he remembered it.
Witherspoon joined the Thursday evening broadcast of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and she explained to the host that it was one of the first auditions she had ever done as a teenager — for a movie called “Cape Fear” with De Niro and director Martin Scorcese.
WATCH:
The “Sweet Home Alabama” star explained that 1991 she had been just 14 years old — and prior to the audition, she hadn’t really known who De Niro was. When a helpful receptionist clued her in on just how big the “Goodfellas” star really was, Witherspoon said she got so nervous that she totally blew it.
“One of the very first auditions I ever had was with Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese for a movie called ‘Cape Fear.’ I didn’t get it. I’m not in that movie because I got so scared when I walked in the room,” she said, adding, “I didn’t know who Robert De Niro was, so I was standing outside talking to the receptionist. She was like, ‘You know he’s the most important actor of our time, right?'”
“I was 14. I’d never seen ‘Goodfellas.’ I’d never seen ‘The Godfather.’ So it totally got on my nerves,” she continued.Witherspoon went on to divulge that the audition — while she was reading opposite De Niro — got so bad that she got stuck on one word, struggling to the point that De Niro just jumped in and said it for her.
But that was only the beginning of Witherspoon’s story — she said that she went to audition for De Niro again about a decade later, and despite her hopes that he might have forgotten about the last time, he had not.
“I thought, ‘He’s never gonna remember that I bricked that audition,'” Witherspoon said.
“And he was like, ‘I remember you.’ I was like, ‘Me?’ He’s like, ‘Oh yeah. You’re the one who couldn’t say the word.'”
“I was like, ‘Oh, my God! This is so bad!'” she exclaimed.