9 Actors Who Felt They Should've Been Offered Parts Without Having To Audition, And 10 Who Actually Got Major Roles Without Trying Out

Most actors' careers start in the audition room, where they generally face more rejection than success. However, once they reach a certain level of fame, they don't have to audition much — or at all! — because casting directors begin offering them roles directly.

At least, that's generally how an actor would expect their career to go. It doesn't always happen that way, though, and many famous, successful actors may still find themselves stuck in the audition room. Some don't mind, but others really hate it.

Here are 9 celebs who hate being asked to audition:

1.Beyoncé was considered for the role of Tiana in The Princess and the Frog, but she reportedly "expected an offer, but wouldn't audition and so she didn't get one."

Casting director Jen Rudin told the New York Post, "[The role] went to Anika Noni Rose, who was the most qualified."

2.According to director James Cameron, Leonardo DiCaprio almost lost his role in Titanic because he refused to read for it. Cameron told GQ, "There was a meeting with Leo and then there was a screen test with Leo. ... He came back a couple of days later, and I had the camera set up to record the video. He didn't know he was going to test. He thought it was another meeting to meet Kate [Winslet]. So I said, 'Okay, we'll just go in the next room, and we'll run some lines, and I'll video it.' And he said, 'You mean, I'm reading?' I said, 'Yeah.' He said, 'Oh, I don't read.' I shook his hand and said, 'Thanks for coming by.'"

He continued, "[Leo said,] 'Wait, wait, wait. If I don't read, I don't get the part? Just like that?' [I replied,] 'Oh, yeah. Come on. This is a giant movie that is going to take two years of my life, and you'll be gone doing five other things while I'm doing post-production. So, I'm not going to fuck it up by making the wrong decision in casting. So, you're going to read, or you're not going to get the part.' So he comes in, and he's, like, every ounce of his entire being is just so negative — right up until I said, 'Action.' Then he turned into Jack. Kate just lit up, and they played the scene. Dark clouds had opened up, and a ray of sun came down and lit up Jack. I'm like, 'All right. He's the guy.'"

3.Kirsten Dunst told Backstage, "I hate auditioning, because I’m so out of [practice]. When you're in the grind of it, you're so much better at it."

However, she's more than willing to audition for parts she really wants.

She continued, "Now, I prepare differently than how I used to audition. It’s a totally different preparation. Anything I did in that audition [for Jeff Nichols' Midnight Special], I didn’t even do in the movie."

4.Russell Crowe was offended when Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld tweeted that the actor should audition for the role of Cable.

Twitter: @robertliefeld

Liefeld told Collider, "One night before I went to bed, I didn't know Russell Crowe was on Twitter, and I stupidly tweeted to Russell Crowe — not ever thinking he'd answer me — and I go, 'Hey Russell, you should read for Cable!' That didn't turn out very well. I got yelled at a lot, because I woke up — because he's in Australia — to Russell Crowe saying 'Read for it?!' And my manager said, 'Yeah, Russell Crowe doesn't read for parts, Rob. You kind of insulted him.' I'm like 'I'm sorry! They just haven't picked Cable yet, so I'm just putting it out there.' And then my phone rings, so some Fox people may or may not have yelled at me for an hour."

5.O'Shea Jackson Jr.'s dad, Ice Cube, didn't want people to think he was given his Straight Outta Compton role, so he made him work for it. Jackson told People, "For two years, I was going to acting classes, learning techniques, going to auditions, callbacks, and things like that."

He also said, "They put me through the wringer."

6.Jennifer Lawrence struggled with the audition process from early in her career. She told Book It Self Tape, "I was awful at auditions. I think it's unfair to, like, throw four pieces of paper at somebody and be like, 'Act, monkey!'"

She continued, "I remember when I had done, like two movies, but I was still very much auditioning. Burning Plane was the only movie people had seen, and my agent would say that [casting directors] would call back and be like, 'We were very disappointed, after seeing Burning Plane, in her audition.' And it's like, really? You put me in a room with a weird camera, and it looks different than me doing a movie and being on set/ I don't know. I'm not very good at that."

7.Samuel L. Jackson had to audition for one of his most iconic roles, but he was frustrated over it because he'd already been promised it was his. Quentin Tarantino told him that he'd written the role of Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction just for him and only wanted him to read for it. However, going back on his word, the director had other actors audition, so Jackson flew to LA, preparing his own audition on the plane. He told Vanity Fair, "I sort of was angry, pissed, tired."

The actor stopped for a burger on the way and brought it with him. When he showed up to the studio, no one else was there to meet him.

He said, "When they came back, a line producer or somebody who was with them said, 'I love your work, Mr. Fishburne [meaning Laurence Fishburne, who reportedly turned down the role].' It was like a slow burn. He doesn't know who I am? I was kind of like, 'Fuck it.' At that point, I really didn't care."

His audition blew the director and producers away. He continued, "[Producer Lawrence] Bender told me not to worry. Everything was cool. The job was mine. And he said the one thing that sealed it was they never knew how the movie was going to end until I did the last scene in the diner.”

8.Malcolm McDowell was interested in playing Soran after reading the Star Trek Generations script, but he reportedly refused to read for the role after a meeting with the filmmakers. According to The Fifty-Year Mission The Next 25 Years, he said, "What do they think it is, Shakespeare?"

Regardless, he went on to play the part.

9.And Jennifer Coolidge, who originated the role of Paulette in Legally Blonde, was shocked when, in 2001, a London theater asked her to audition to play the same role in a musical adaptation of the movie. She told Variety, "I said to my agent, 'What do you mean, audition? It's not a straight offer?'"

She continued, "My agent said, 'I think they just want to see if you can sing and dance.' Look, if I got up on stage and farted, and that's all I did, it would still be the lady from the movie!"

And now, here are 10 celebs who don't have to audition anymore:

10.Timothée Chalamet "hasn't auditioned for anything in more than seven years," according to his agent, Brian Swardstrom.

In response to a viral unconfirmed report that Chalamet and other actors had auditioned for Gladiator 2, Swardstrom tweeted, "I know one of these actors was shooting a film in the middle east for the past several months."

11.Michael Schur wrote the role of April Ludgate in Parks and Rec specifically for Aubrey Plaza because "Allison Jones, who is one of the people who cast the show, called [him] and said, 'I just met the weirdest girl I've ever met in my life. You have to meet her and put her on your show.'"

He told the AV Club, "Aubrey came over to my office and made me feel really uncomfortable for like an hour, and immediately I wanted to put her in the show. We didn't totally know what we were going to do with her, we just thought it would be funny if Leslie had a college-aged intern who she wanted to inspire, and that that person would be Aubrey Plaza."

12.The chemistry Margot Robbie had with Will Smith in Focus helped her land the role of Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad. She told MTV, "I actually got offered this one, I didn't audition, which is a real step up as an actor when you can get offered things."

She continued, "[Will and I] didn't have to do chemistry reads or anything like that, and then I already knew, vaguely knew Jared Leto, who's playing the Joker."

13.Peter Dinklage was one of only two exceptions to the "long, drawn out casting process" of Game of Thrones because series creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss "knew [they] wanted [him as Tyrion Lannister] from the beginning."

Benioff told Collider, "We obviously didn't ask [him] to audition. We just went after [him]. I had met Peter before, socially. We have a mutual friend, so I got his email address and sent him an email that just said, 'I don't know if you have heard of these books, but there is a character named Tyrion Lannister, and I think you would be fantastic.  Maybe we could talk about it at some point.' So, we started emailing, and then he came out to LA. We sat down with him and had a great conversation, where he basically said, 'I am really interested in this part, but don't give me a beard. Dwarves in fantasy movies always have big beards. It's the cliché of fantasy.' So, we promised him that he wouldn't have to have a beard, and that went well."

14.Chris Evans "didn't audition at all" for Steve Rogers in Captain America: The First Avenger because director Joe Johnson "was already familiar with everything he'd done and was championing his cause, not that [he] had a fight from the Marvel team."

Johnson told Earth's Mightiest, "He came in to the art department to say hi, saw all the jaw-dropping art and designs on the wall, and reacted the way I'd hoped he would. It was really his wonderful enthusiasm for everything he saw that cinched the deal."

15.While working on his script for The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro wrote the role of Zelda Fuller for Octavia Spencer. As soon as she read the script, she knew she wanted to be part of something so "magical." When they met up to discuss the project, they spent hours just chatting.

She told CBS This Morning, "I'm a huge Guillermo del Toro fan. I've seen everything he's directed and just about everything he's executive produced and he's an auteur, a true auteur. The first scene when everything is underwater — I said, 'Oh my God. They're gonna be doing things like this. I want to be a part of this movie.'"

16.Adam Driver didn't have to try out for Kylo Ren in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He told The Howard Stern Show, "I went out and met J.J. [Abrams, the director], and we did...a meet-and-greet thing. Then, it was him thinking about it for a little bit."

He added, "He couldn't tell me, really, anything about the part either. At that point, it was just to look at me, I think."

About six months later, Abrams finally offered him the part.

17.Michael Fassbender stopped having to go to auditions after Hunger premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. He told The National, "I get taken to lunch instead of having to audition."

"You spend years just trying to break into a room and get a role and then people want to take you to lunch?" he said.

18.Casting director Fred Roos wanted George Lucas to cast Harrison Ford as Han Solo in Star Wars, but the director had a rule that he wouldn't hire any actors he'd worked with on his recent film American Graffiti. So, Roos hired Ford to build a door in the offices where Lucas was holding his casting call. In need of an assistant reader, Lucas asked Ford to help him feed lines to the auditioners, but, of course, he ended up offering him the part.

During the 2017 Star Wars Celebration panel, Roos said, "Harrison had done a lot of carpentry for me. He needed money, he had kids, he wasn't a big movie star yet. The day he was doing it, George happened to be there. It was serendipitous."

19.Some actors who get offers still like to audition for other parts. Because of typecasting, Sydney Sweeney only gets offers for roles similar to ones she's already played. She told Variety, "There's always people who see me as Cassie [from Euphoria] or see me as Olivia [from The White Lotus]. They send me scripts that are just like that. It's the ones I have to fight for that usually are the ones that I want that are different, like Reality. I had to audition for it. I had to put myself on tape and send in my audition just like everybody else."

She continued, "It was the same for White Lotus. They didn't think that I was right for White Lotus, because I did Euphoria. So I put myself on tape, I auditioned for White Lotus just like everybody else and had a callback like everybody else. I could get offered roles that are similar to the ones that I've played, but the ones that are different, the ones that surprise people that I do, are the ones that I usually have to fight for."