The Surprising Audition Tom Hiddleston Calls His Worst

With the success of his character in the MCU, it's difficult to imagine that Tom Hiddleston ever struggled to find roles. His portrayal of Loki, god of mischief, throughout Marvel's expanded film universe has made him as much of a legend as the Norse god his character inspires. Like any other actor, however, Hiddleston had to work hard to get where he is, and that means learning from experience.

Of course, the best experiential lessons are taught through failure. It's a lot easier to see what you should have done when you missed the mark entirely. In Hiddleston's case, one surprising audition for a major motion picture ended up being his worst. Had things gone differently, we might associate Tom Hiddleston's name with an entirely different Disney-owned character. Unfortunately for him, things did not go differently, and he was forced to learn an important lesson about preparing for upcoming auditions.

Back in the early 2000s, before Hiddleston was the international movie star we know now, he was a young up-and-comer forging his path in Hollywood. On one fateful night, Hiddleston received a call from his manager informing him of an audition for the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" taking place the next day at 10 a.m. He sent Hiddleston a copy of the script and told him to be ready.

However, as Hiddleston revealed in the Shakespeare documentary, "Muse of Fire," the young actor was just about to head out for a night on the town with his friends. A close friend of his had just finished college exams, and they intended to celebrate the occasion in the same way most college students celebrate anything, by getting completely drunk. He only briefly studied the script and showed up to the audition the next morning with a hangover and no lines memorized. As a result, the casting director chose Orlando Bloom to play the character of Will Turner instead.

"[The casting director] was like, 'Uh-huh. Well, thanks for coming in,'" Hiddleston said. "She asked, 'Why haven't you learned it? This is going to be huge,' and I said 'I got the script at 5 o'clock last night,' which I've since learned is no excuse ... You've got to learn one way or the other. But, Orlando Bloom is Orlando Bloom. Who is to say I would have gotten it anyway?"