Alden Ehrenreich has admitted that he self-sabotaged his audition for Andrew Garfield’s The Amazing Spider-Man. The actor, now known for Hail, Caesar! and Oppenheimer, confessed during a recent podcast conversation hosted by Daisy Ridley. He looked back on his early twenties with the calm of a man who has since learned to memorize his pages. The story involves a crowded room, a missing script, and a young actor with a lot of feelings.

While most actors fear forgetting their lines, Ehrenreich arrived with none to forget, and the casting room noticed almost immediately.

The cause, according to Alden Ehrenreich, was a total lack of preparation. While Andrew Garfield went on to swing through the Spider-Man films, Ehrenreich walked into the same audition process without his pages memorized. That alone was enough to cost him a real chance at playing Peter Parker.

“I showed up woefully unprepared for that in a way that I would never do later,” he told the Happy Sad Confused podcast.

He then added, “I was 22 I think or 21 and I kind of showed up not memorized and got there and there was a full set.”

Ehrenreich explained on the Happy Sad Confused podcast that the scene involved ten actors at a dinner table, all off-book while he still needed his pages. He also admitted the role did not feel right, since the story seemed a repeat of earlier Spider-Man films and signing his life away held no appeal. Reports had placed him among the top three contenders, and he recalled passing Garfield on the way out.

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While Ehrenreich now sees that audition as a lucky escape from early fame, another future web-slinger took his own rejections far harder.

Tom Holland knows the sting of a lost role. Before joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he auditioned for Finn in the sequel trilogy of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but John Boyega landed the part. He also came close to the lead role of Addison in November Criminals, a 2017 film written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, which went to Ansel Elgort. Holland told Backstage that this loss hurt the most.

Holland had expected November Criminals to be his stepping stone into young-adult leads, so losing it left him angry. His father, comedian Dominic Holland, reminded him that setbacks come with success. Years later, Holland told The Hollywood Reporter that he would keep playing Peter Parker as long as Marvel allows, depending on how Spider-Man: Brand New Day performs. Both actors lost a role they wanted, yet Alden Ehrenreich’s underprepared Spider-Man audition did not stop him from building a résumé worth envying.

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