Hollywood stars have been around for ages! Over the years, they receive all these awards and some of us might look up to them for their acting prowess. We love how they portray unforgettable characters like Meryl Streep’s diabolical editor Miranda Priestly in Devil Wears Prada or Drew Barrymore’s role in 50 First Dates as a short-term memory impaired charming blonde beauty.

However, there are still moments when these Hollywood celebrities can’t get the roles they want, regardless of how stellar or how award winning an actress is. They are still human after all. They also make the same mistakes we do or who knows, they might even have experienced worse.

It’s interesting to know about different Hollywood actresses’ plight to making it to stardom. Some of these bad experiences are amusing to hear about, but there are some experiences that are just downright maddening!

In fact, some of these Hollywood personalities even have the misfortune of finding themselves in the despicable casting couch. Unfortunately, some of these actresses were too young or too naive to realize what was happening. However, the bottom line is that no person should ever endure being invited to take a seat in the infamous casting couch. No one should take advantage of a person’s dream to pursue an acting career. In addition, this issue should be taken seriously. Victim shaming should not be practiced and that predators need to be punished.

Continue reading below to learn more about Hollywood’s finest ladies and their most controversial or worst auditions before making a name for themselves.

15. Alexandra Daddario

With blue eyes as clear and as deep as the sea and a body to die for, it’s no wonder Alexandra Daddario bagged the role of Summer Quinn for the movie Baywatch. However, the star from young adult fantasy movie Percy Jackson shared that she had an uncomfortable audition for the role of a lifeguard.

It is said that the blue-eyed beauty had to take a chemistry test with actor Zac Efron before she could join the Baywatch cast. However, Alexandra also had to wear a bikini during her audition. Alexandra may have felt a little uncomfortable during the audition, but fortunately for her fans, she still got the role.

14. Thandie Newton

Unfortunately, not even Hollywood stars are safe from casting couch horror stories. Thandie Newton shared that she was abused during one of her earlier auditions.

According to the actress, she was eighteen at the time when an unnamed director asked her to perform inappropriate acts during the audition. The director even shot up Thandie’s skirt and asked her to touch her breasts. To make things even more disgusting, said director even showed the video to a couple of his friends at home during a game of poker.

Thandie Newton found out about this when a drunk producer accidentally told her that he saw the video of her audition

13. January Jones

It’s tough auditioning for a role when you are missing a prop. For January Jones, her audition was so bad she just ended up calling her agent just to say, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

But what lead to January Jones giving up on her chance to be a part of Coyote Ugly? The actress shared that producer Jerry Bruckheimer asked her to get up on a table and pole dance to Prince’s song Kiss. However, there was no pole on said table! Jones also adds that according to Bruckheimer, she read the script well, but she had no rhythm. Ouch!

12. Emma Stone

Emma Stone received her worst audition when she was just at the ripe young age of 12. The La La Land actress shared that she auditioned for She’s All That, a hit show that helped launch the careers of Amanda Bynes and Nick Cannon among others.

The young Emma Stone was expecting to read a script, but it turns out five minutes before entering the room Emma Stone had to come up with her own characters for the audition. The talented beauty was caught unawares, but was still able to present hilarious characters like a cheerleader who couldn’t spell and a possessed babysitter.

11. Megan Fox

Auditions may come in all forms. However, it gets a bit shady when an actress gets asked to drop by a director’s home to wash his Ferrari as part of her audition. As weird as that sounds, an actress needs to do what needs to be done in order to get the role, right? Megan Fox did just as Michael Bay needed and landed the role of Mikaela Banes for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Things get even dodgier when a reporter asks where the said audition video is and the director only replies with, “Er, I don’t know where it is either.”

10. Jenny McCarthy

Jenny McCarthy is an American actress, model, and TV host who brings the heat on. Unfortunately, a fellow actor took it to extremes when he suggested Jenny McCarthy to take he clothes off during an audition for Under Siege 2.

The voluptuous model, allegedly, shares that Steven Seagull kept insisting that there was going to be nudity in the scene. However, the actress adds that she was holding the pages of the script and no nudity was found in the plot. Jenny McCarthy wept and left the room, but not before Steven Seagull caught up with her and warned her to not tell anyone about the incident.

9. Gal Gadot

There actually isn’t a particular audition that Gal Gadot thinks is the worst audition. However, the Israeli Miss Universe turned actress was pretty close to giving up show business before she got the enviable role of Wonder Woman. The Israeli beauty shared that she was getting tired of not getting parts she wanted; tired of finding out that she was so close, yet the role was given to someone else.

Fortunately, Gal Gadot decided to do one more Israeli movie before she actually called it quits. It was during filming of the Isreali movie when she got a call for a “secret” audition, which as it turns out was for Wonder Woman. The rest is history!

8. Salma Hayek

Mexican-born actress Salma Hayek shared that she was invited to audition for the role of Selena. Apparently, there were 22,000 girls who auditioned for the role, but Salma Hayek knew better; the only true contenders were herself and Jennifer Lopez who was then just starting to make a name for herself.

Salma ended up not participating in the auditions because she felt it was wrong to hold the auditions so soon after the talented Tejano’s death. She didn’t feel comfortable rising to fame in expense of a fellow artist’s early demise. Obviously, the role went to J.Lo, which catapulted her to stardom.

7. Elle Fanning

Auditions are definitely hard work! It’s like dating; you have to spend hours preparing and you also need to always put your best foot forward. Unfortunately, no matter how well you’ve prepped, not all dating experiences or auditions go well as you’ve planned.

Take it from the lovely Elle Fanning who starred in the Maleficent movie. According to the young actress, the worst audition she had was when she was auditioning for a Jessica Chastain film. The younger Fanning sibling could have proven she was worthy of the role she was auditioning for, but sadly the charming actress fainted.

Whatever the reason for Elle Fanning’s fainting spell, we still love her and hope to see her bag more auditions in the future!

6. Eliza Dushku

Actors and actresses always want to give their 100% when portraying roles. In Eliza Dushku’s case, she did more than what was needed. She was so in tune with the character she was playing, and felt that pulling a knife at the director would land her the job.

The Bring It On star thought the director didn’t like that she pulled a knife at him, but Dushku was confident she had a good chance of bagging the role.

Eventually, Dushku realized she might have overdone it with the knife. Eliza Dushku was right. The casting staff ended up giving the role to Natalie Portman.

5. Drew Barrymore

There comes such a low point in every one’s life that we have no choice but to suck it up and deal with it; and suck it is exactly what Drew Barrymore did for one of her auditions.

The Charlie’s Angels moviestar shares that she was called for an audition on a Sunday. However, it seemed like the staff didn’t think she was good enough for a casting director to see her audition. Drew Barrymore ended up auditioning in front of a casting assistant instead.

To make things worse, she had to replicate giving oral pleasures to a man’s finger for the role. Thing is, there was no man in sight so the actress had to suck her own finger to simulate the scene needed for her audition.

4.  Kat Dennings

You know when you’re working and there’s this annoying colleague in the workplace who just won’t cooperate? That’s what happened with Kat Dennings.

According to the Two Broke Girls star, she was auditioning for the role of a daughter of an unnamed movie. The girl was supposed to be having a depressing moment where the father was supposedly restraining her.

Unfortunately, the actor who plays the role of the father had other things in mind. Instead of hugging Kat Dennings and helping her with the audition, this jerk of an unnamed actor chose to stay as far away from the crying Kat.

3. Meryl Streep

The year was 1976, a young new actress walks in a building. She heads for the 33^rd floor and enters the penthouse office of a producer named Dino De Laurentiis, Sr. Then unknown actress Meryl Streep hears the producer tell his son in Italian, “Brutta, why do you bring me this ugly thing?”

However, it turns out that Meryl Streep knows some Italian herself. So she tells the rude producer, “I’m sorry I’m not beautiful enough to be in King Kong.”

The role she auditioned for may have been given to Jessica Lange, but that didn’t stop Meryl Streep from becoming the great actress that she is today!

2. Felicity Huffman

The Desperate Housewives star decided to put on a dress but soon realized that she wasn’t as endowed as she needed to be in an audition. Being the genius that she is, she used some toilet paper to stuff her bra and off she went to the audition.

Unfortunately, the toilet paper didn’t do much to boost her confidence; She ended up giving a not too stellar audition. To add a bit more to the humiliation, Felicity Huffman leaned down to reach for her bag when the toilet paper decided to give the director and the rest of the people in the room a show; toilet paper rolls off Huffman’s chest and lands on the floor. Needless to say, Felicity Huffman made a “memorable” exit.

1. Lucy Hale

When 50 Shades of Grey hit the shelves, it made quite a hit with the readers. Naturally, actresses would go gaga over auditions when it was announced that the romantic erotic book was going to be launched on the silverscreen.

Lucy Hale, one of the actresses who did audition for the part of Anastasia Steele, shared that she was quite uncomfortable with how her audition went. She had to read a two-page monologue of what you would expect from 50 Shades of Grey. Hale adds that she’d hate it if her grandmother gets to see her audition for said movie.