Can you imagine this switch in The Holiday?
Seventeen years after the Christmas movie's release, Robert Downey Jr. and Jimmy Fallon revealed they both auditioned for the Nancy Meyers film starring Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz, Jack Black and Jude Law.
"We both got called in just as seat fillers and we saw each other," the Iron Man star recalled on the July 16 episode of SiriusXM's The Howard Stern Show. "Jack Black is getting his part, and Jude Law is definitely getting my part. But she needed someone to read with the gals, and we're sitting there going, 'It's about to happen for us.'"
Downey was so confident he'd land Law's role (Graham, the brother to Diaz's Amanda) that he began perfecting—more so his description than ours—his British accent for his audition at New York's Carlyle hotel.
"I was like, 'I gotta have a better English accent than Jude Law at this point,'" he continued. "And Winslet said, 'That was the worst British accent I have ever heard.' And I was like, 'I'll check out now, but I'm taking the gummy bears from the mini bar.'"
Meanwhile, Fallon really wanted to nab the role of composer Miles, who Winslet's Iris falls for in the film.
"I said, 'If Jack Black says no to this movie, I'm so in,'" he shared. "'I'll do it for half his price.'"
Or offer his salary to Downey.
"By far, without a doubt, I'm sitting across from Robert Downey Jr., and I go, 'This is the best actor I've ever sat across and did a scene with in my entire life.' It was mind-blowing for me," Fallon remembered before joking, "and I quit the business. I never went back. That was the last time I auditioned for a role."
Thankfully, Downey wasn't so quick to give up, even though he too lost the gig. As he recalled, "Nancy said to me, she said to both of us at the same time, 'It's just—this was great. It's just not a perfect fit.'"
For more secrets about The Holiday, keep reading.