Reese Witherspoon is looking back on two awkward encounters she had with two very famous actors during her early career.
When the actress was just 14 years old, she “bricked” an audition in front of Robert De Niro because she had no idea who he was upon meeting him at the time.
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“I’m not in that movie because I got so scared when I walked in the room,” Witherspoon recalled auditioning for De Niro’s 1991 thriller “Cape Fear” during Thursday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
“I didn’t know who Robert De Niro was, so I was standing outside talking to the receptionist. She was like, ‘You know he’s the most important actor of our time, right?'” the award-winning actress continued to tell host Jimmy Kimmel, noting that, as a teen, she got very nervous during auditions.
Witherspoon added how the receptionist’s remarks only made her more anxious.
“I was 14. I’d never seen ‘Goodfellas’. I’d never seen ‘The Godfather’. So it totally got on my nerves,” she continued.
The “Legally Blonde” star told Kimmel that the audition was so bad that De Niro had to step in and finish her lines. According to Witherspoon, the iconic actor, now 79, even remembered the mishap 10 years later when they met again for another audition.
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“I thought, ‘He’s never gonna remember that I bricked that audition,'” the actress said during the show. “And he was like, ‘I remember you.’ I was like, ‘Me?’ He’s like, ‘Oh yeah. You’re the one who couldn’t say the word.'”
“Oh, my God! This is so bad,” Witherspoon stressed about her second embarrassing encounter with De Niro.
Moving on to another celebrity run-in as a teen, the 46-year-old recounted her job as a pre-production intern on the set of Denzel Washington’s 1995 film “Devil in a Blue Dress”. The actress was responsible for parking cast members’ cars.
“Whenever Denzel came in, I had to park his Porsche. Which is not a good idea for a 17-year-old kid with a brand-new drivers license. Oh my God, I stripped all the gears, it was terrible,” Witherspoon recalled.
“But the funny story is I saw him a few years ago at a wedding,” she continued. “And he’s like, ‘I heard you tell this story about how you used to park my Porsche.’ And I was like, ‘Yes, I did.’ And he’s like, ‘But, did you know, your costumes for [2011’s] ‘Water for Elephants’, who took them in and out of your trailer?’ No, I have no idea. He’s [like], ‘My daughter.'”
“And I was like, ‘That is amazing.’ So it [was] full circle,” she added.
Elsewhere during the late-night interview, Witherspoon reflected on meeting her “Your Place or Mine” co-star, Ashton Kutcher, for the first time.
