Jake Gyllenhaal Recalls Totally Tanking His Lord of the Rings Audition

Appearing on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon last night, actor Jake Gyllenhaal recalled his Lord of the Rings audition for the part of Frodo. It didn't go so well, with Peter Jackson telling him he was the worst actor who auditioned for the part.

Gyellenhaal started off by recalling the events that led up to the audition. "I got a call from all these agents, from like 14 different agents; they were all so excited," he remembers. "They were like, 'Guess what? They're making Lord of the Rings and Peter Jackson's making it; it's going to be three movies over three-and-a-half years.' And I was like, 'Oh, wow, cool'. Then they were like, 'And when they said they needed a Hobbit, we thought JAKE!'"

Gyllenhaal then went in to audition, but he ran into trouble right away. For the first part of his audition, he wasn't asked to say lines, but instead instructed to act out a scene when Frodo finds the One Ring. He didn't know stage direction would be part of the audition and wasn't able to do much with the scene.

Next, he performed a speaking part, but again, things could have gone better. He didn't know he was supposed to use a British accent, and since he apparently hadn't developed one prior to the audition, he just read the lines normally.

Jackson wasn't pleased. "You are the worst actor that I have ever seen," Gyllenhaal remembers the director saying to him. "Did anyone tell you you were supposed to have an accent? I was like, 'No.' He was like, 'Fire your agents.'"

The part of Frodo ultimately went to Elijah Wood.

As with other big-time movies, there are a lot of interesting stories around casting for Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Daniel Day-Lewis, Russell Crowe, and Nicolas Cage turned down the role of Aragorn, while Sean Connery said no to playing Gandalf.