‘I was drunk, obviously’: the wild ways that stars bagged their big break

A story about Pedro Pascal recently resurfaced, describing how he was able to get his big break on Game of Thrones. The short version is that he stole it. The longer story is that Pascal had taken to mentoring young actors after seeing his career stall a little. One of them told him that he was auditioning for the role of Oberyn Martell in the fantasy epic and wanted help to secure the role.

But, as Pascal told the US talk show host Seth Meyers in 2016, the young actor didn’t seem right for the part: “He’s, like, a 25-year-old kid, really, really talented, good-looking … He’d never seen the show.” Knowing he could do better, Pascal waited for his mentee to leave, taped his own audition and told his friend Sarah Paulson what he had done. Paulson is a friend of Amanda Peet, who is married to one of the Game of Thrones showrunners, and she made sure the audition got into the right hands; the rest is TV history.

It’s a very Game of Thronesy story, full of desperation, duplicity and cronyism, but there is also a message in it for young actors. Sometimes the big break can come from anywhere, especially if you are willing to stiff your acquaintances and leverage famous friends for personal gain. But Pascal isn’t the only actor to take a less traditional path to success.

Mel Gibson has a similar, if slightly less devious story. When the first Mad Max film was being cast, the story goes that one of Gibson’s friends wanted to audition for the lead role. Gibson agreed to give him a lift to the casting session, only for the casting director to clap eyes on Gibson – who was cut and bruised from losing a bar fight the night before – and offer him the part instead.

There is also the fairytale route, where actors have been plucked from obscurity by a random encounter with a power player. After spells of bumbling listlessly around, Chris Pratt was working in Hawaii at the Maui branch of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co and living in his van. One night in the late 1990s, the actor Rae Dawn Chong visited Maui for pre-production on a film she was directing, and found herself in the restaurant. “I was like, ‘You’re in the movies, right? I always wanted to be in the movies,’” Pratt later recalled. “She said, ‘You’re cute. Do you act?’ I was like, fuck it, goddamn right I act! Put me in a movie!” And she did.

Charlie Hunnam has a similar story. Before Queer as Folk, Sons of Anarchy, King Arthur and Pacific Rim, Hunnam had a small role in an episode of the BBC children’s drama Byker Grove, as a boy named Jason whose main character trait was an interest in finger buffets. He later revealed that he got the job by being drunk in a shoe shop on Christmas Eve. “I was trying on some trainers for my brother and having a bit of a dance around, drunk obviously,” he told Graham Norton in 2017. “There was a lady staring at me so I blew her a kiss and gave her a sort of little wink. It turned out that she was the production manager of Byker Grove. She said, ‘I think you’re quite lovely.’ I said, ‘I do too!’ She invited me in, I did an audition and they gave me a part.”

All these stories, even Pascal’s, have a common element. Someone saw something in these actors and gave them a shot. But sometimes you simply have to do the work, to put in the hours working on whatever tiny part comes your way in the hope that it will lead to something bigger. That is what is so special about Bryan Cranston.

Cranston is a once-in-a-generation actor, capable of searing drama and goofy comedy. But before Malcolm in the Middle and Breaking Bad made him a household name, Cranston did adverts. So many adverts. Adverts for Mars bars, for cotton shirts, adverts in which he dances with salad dressing, in which he wears glasses and informs viewers about the dangers of haemorrhoidal inflammation. In all of them, no matter how slight, Cranston absolutely means it. The roles are small, but you can clearly see the makings of, arguably, the world’s best actor.

And that is the real message. If you want something, put maximum effort into everything you do. Or, failing that, get hammered in a shoe shop and wink at strangers. That seems to work, too.