The Audition Johnny Depp Calls His Worst Ever— Why It Still Haunts Him Today?

Johnny Depp never found joy in the Hollywood audition process. It was never the red carpets or the money that thrilled him about making it big, but it was finally being free from auditions. Why? Because he absolutely loathed them and always had. For Johnny Depp, the idea of being judged in a cold, quiet room by emotionless faces didn’t sit well, as he saw acting as a deeper form of connection.

A Flu Gave Johnny Depp His Breakthrough Role

Depp admitted he was terrible at auditions in his early years. He couldn’t force himself to perform for a panel of strangers staring blankly, and the environment made everything he believed about acting feel artificial.

“I was a young idiot,” Johnny Depp remembered at the AFI Festival in 2015, per Far Out Magazine. “I recognised that this process really had far less to do with performance and far less to do with connecting. So, in my mind I always thought, to put it in a very nice way, ‘This is horseshit.’ It’s an uncomfortable place to be where you feel you must be ‘on.’”

Ironically, his most successful audition came when he was far from his best. While being sick with a brutal flu, he was dragged into a last-minute reading for 21 Jump Street. He could barely think straight, which turned out to be a blessing. Besides, Depp was too exhausted to overthink. But somehow he breezed through it, and the next thing he knew, he was headed to Vancouver to start shooting. His foggy mind had finally saved him from himself.