Robert Downey Jr. Reveals How Kate Winslet Roasted Him Following a Failed Audition

Every actor has roles that they went out for and didn’t get, but not every actor can say they got roasted by Kate Winslet over a failed audition — but Robert Downey Jr. can. During a recent episode of The Howard Stern Show, both Downey and Jimmy Fallon revealed that they had auditioned for the 2006 romantic comedy The Holiday with Downey reading for the part that ultimately went to Jude Law and Fallon having auditioned for the part that went to Jack Black. Downey explained that while he felt confident about his odds, Winslet, who starred in the film, soon brought him back down to earth with a blunt comment about his British accent.

“We both got called in just as seat fillers… [director Nancy Meyers] needed someone to read with the gals and we’re sitting there going, ‘it’s about to happen for us,” Downey said (via People). “And I was like, ‘I’ve got to have a better English accent than Jude Law at this point.’ And Winslet said, ‘That was the worst British accent I’ve ever heard.’ And I was like, I’ll check out now, but I’m taking the gummy bears from the minibar.’”

Fallon had praise for Downey’s performance and the actor himself added that Meyers also thought it was great, just not right for the film.

“Nancy said to me, said to both of us at the same time, ‘It’s great, it’s just not a perfect fit,” Downey said.

Released in 2006, The Holiday starred Winslet and Cameron Diaz as two women from different sides of the Atlantic who swap homes during Christmas with Amanda (Diaz) ending up falling in love with a book editor named Graham (Law) and Iris (Winslet) finds romance with a film composer named Miles (Black). Downey would end up starring in Iron Man, which opened in theaters in 2008.

Robert Downey Jr. Calls Oppenheimer the Best Film He’s Ever Been In

As for Downey’s latest project, the actor appears in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, playing Lewis Strauss. During a recent appearance at the film’s U.K. premiere, Downey praised the film, calling it the best movie he’s ever been in.

“This is the best film I have ever been in, and I cannot wait for you all to experience it,” Downey said.

Downey’s Oppenheimer Co-Star Cillian Murphy Had High Praise for the Actor

Cillian Murphy, who stars in Oppenheimer, had great praise for Downey.

“I think Robert Downey Jr. is just absolutely electrifying in that role. I think he’s mind-blowingly good in it. We talked a lot, me and Robert and Chris [Nolan] about it, about this dynamic between that relationship because it’s really, really interesting and complex,” Murphy recently told ComicBook.com. “When you think that one man’s motivation in destroying another man can be about a slight at this tiny, tiny event, so he feels slighted. It was just fascinating to talk about that.”

“Then the scenes where we did get to work together, it was just the best,” Murphy added. “He’s the most wonderful scene partner and so generous, so focused, but you never know what you’re going to get in a brilliant way. Some of those scenes, Chris let us loose a little bit so we could actually extemporize and improvise a little bit. They were some of my favorite scenes in the movie.”

In addition to Murphy and Downey Jr., Oppenheimer stars Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as Leslie Groves, Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, Michael Angarano as Robert Serber, Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence, Dylan Arnold as Frank Oppenheimer, David Krumholtz as Isidor Isaac Rabi, Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush, Josh Peck as Kenneth Bainbridge, Devon Bostick as Seth Neddermeyer, Matthias Schweighöfer as Werner Heisenberg, Christopher Denham as Klaus Fuchs, Guy Burnet as George Eltenton, Danny Deferrari as Enrico Fermi, Emma Dumont as Jackie Oppenheimer, Gustaf Skarsgård as Hans Bethe, Trond Fausa Aurvåg as George Kistiakowsky, and Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman.

Opening on July 21st, Oppenheimer is based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.