Sam Worthington's 'Angry' Avatar Audition Should Have Cost Him The Role
We're living through a time now where, more than ever, information is incredibly easy to come by. That makes it difficult to quietly develop a piece of original intellectual property, and it's made the audition process for these projects a wildly secretive affair. So many franchises, from Marvel to the expanding "Lord of the Rings" universe, employ similar tactics, to the point where cast members have no idea what they're auditioning for until they actually book the role.
It was no different for "Avatar," the James Cameron brainchild that broke the box office over a decade ago. Before tapping Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña into the film, Cameron and producers put the actors through a rigorous, secretive audition process. Neither had any idea what the project was, what character they'd be playing, or who would be directing. For Saldaña, at least, it was a process she took in stride. Her hot-headed future co-star, on the other hand, didn't take so well to all the secrecy.
'Sam was the guy who made me want to follow him into battle'
Worthington recently spoke to Variety all about his "Avatar" auditions, including the outburst that very well could have cost him the role. After months of vague auditions and camera tests, the Australian actor was finally asked to read for a scene in which his character, Jake Sully, encountered an alien planet. Worthington was so fed up with the process, however, that he ended up projecting his own frustration into the scene — and even spat his gum out towards the camera in protest:
"I was just angry. It was like, 'You're not telling me anything. This is a waste of time.' Later, when they were like, 'Jim Cameron wants to meet you, and this was for his movie,' I was just like, 'Oh s***, I'm going to get in trouble.'"
On the contrary, it was Worthington's anger that actually cut through the noise and got Cameron's attention in a major way. There were a lot of names in the running for Jake Sully, but Worthington had a grit that many of them lacked, at least in Cameron's eyes. "I saw a lot of actors, names you'd be quite impressed by," Cameron told Variety. "But Sam was the guy who made me want to follow him into battle. He was the guy who made me want to go into hell with him, and the other actors never quite pulled it off."
There's definitely an inspiring, engaging quality to Worthington's performance as Jake. The actor has an intensity that Cameron harnesses brilliantly in "Avatar," and in its sequel, "The Way of Water." It's hard to imagine anyone else playing Jake Sully now, but if Worthington hadn't thought to use his gum as an audition tool, we may never have seen what he'd had to offer the role.
"Avatar: The Way of Water" is now playing in theaters everywhere.