In 1991, a struggling young actor by the name of Brad Pitt landed his first big movie role in the Ridley Scott classic Thelma & Louise, a film which helped catapult the then 28-year-old to superstardom. But as Geena Davis explains in the new Hollywood Reporter, the role which launched the career of the biggest movie star on the planet almost went to someone else. The reason: Davis kept messing up Pitt’s audition.
“I actually read with him first – there were five candidates for the role,” she recalls. “And then he came in – this is so embarrassing – but I got a little distracted during the scene, you know? I was forgetting my lines. I was like, ‘I’m totally screwing up this kid’s audition.'”
Davis also describes the shirtless love scene between Thelma and Pitt’s character as “very challenging.”;
As for Sarandon, the 67-year-old Dead Man Walking Oscar-winner says that she knew right away that Pitt would be a big deal: “It seemed like it was absolutely, absolutely easy for him. When I saw the movie and I saw him in the scene in the police station, that’s when I knew that he really was something special. There was really something there. He’s a very smart guy.”
Read The Hollywood Reporter“s full interview with Davis and Sarandon here.
