Elijah Wood’s Sin City Audition Was Hilariously Simple

Elijah Wood has detailed his absurdly easy and humorous audition for Sin City. Sin City is based on a series of graphic novels by Frank Miller, and he co-wrote the film with Robert Rodriguez.  Rodriguez and Miller also shared directing duties on the film, which featured Quentin Tarantino as a guest director, as he helmed a single scene. The film has a stellar cast that, along with Wood, included Bruce Willis, Rosario Dawson, Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, and Jessica Alba, to name a few. Each actor took on the role of one of the city’s many criminals in what was seen as an ambitious project.

Rodriguez wanted to utilize green screens and special effects technology to give Sin City a real comic book look. Moving forward with the tech he first employed for his Spy Kids movies, Rodriguez created a proof of concept film that showed what he could accomplish. That proof of concept got the actors on board and the studio to back it, and it even made it into the final film as the opening scene. That proof of concept film was also Wood’s first glimpse at what the film could ultimately be.

In a video posted by GQ, Wood discusses how he became involved with the production of Sin City. Wood read the graphic novels before he even knew there was a film in the works. However, a chance dinner with Rodriguez not too long after changed all that. Rodriguez told Wood that he was making a Sin City movie, and he asked if Wood wanted to see the proof of concept film he made. The two then made their way to Rodriguez’s car, where Wood was shown the film on a laptop, and just like the other actors coming on board the film, he was blown away at just how amazingly accurate to the comics it looked. Still, Wood was asked to audition for the film, which, as he tells it, is a bit of a hilarious and short story where he simply had to stare into a camera while parts of the graphic novels were read to him. Check out what Wood had to say about his audition below:

“We were at dinner and [Rodriguez] was like ‘Yeah, my next project is Sin City, do you want to see some of it.’ And he had shot that opening sequence with Josh Hartnett out on the roof. He shot that as a proof of concept, both for Frank Miller to prove that he could bring the stories to life in such a way that would look like the work that he had drawn and also as a proof of concept to get the movie made. So I go out to his car and on his computer is that scene that he’d already shot, and it was like – ‘It was a game-changer. Like holy f**k, you’ve done it. It is exactly like the comic.’ And so then, he asked me to audition, and my audition process was to go into – he was holding auditions at the Four Seasons in L.A. And I went into a hotel room and I put on glasses and he’s like, ‘I’m just going to read passages from the comic, from the graphic novel, and you just stare at the camera.’ That was my audition. [Laughing] There was no physicality at all. And I got the role. Obviously.”

Wood’s character in Sin City was named Kevin, and his audition matched much of what Kevin’s role was. Kevin never uttered a word in the film, and while he did have some physical moments, such as his fight with Mickey Rourke’s Marv, the part called for a stoic character who could inspire fear and unease with a simple stare. In that regard, Wood’s audition likely captured exactly what was needed for the film, and though it was a unique audition, Rodriguez knew what to look for.

Sin City ended up making $158 million worldwide off of a $40 million budget, and critics and audiences praised it for its groundbreaking visuals. Unfortunately, it took nine years for a sequel to manifest with Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, by which point the features that made it unique when the original came out in 2005 had been utilized by many major productions since, which caused the sequel to miss at the box office. Wood did not return for the sequel, as Kevin met his demise in the first film, but that doesn’t change the horrifyingly eerie character he immortalized. Though Rodriguez had wanted to make a third film in an effort to film all the stories from the graphic novels, the poor performance at the box office killed any further hope of another sequel, but there may be a TV show adaptation in the works. Today, Sin City still stands as a visual marvel and one of the truest comics to film adaptations ever made.

Source: GQ

About The Author

Timothy McClelland
(233 Articles Published)

Tim McClelland is a TV/Movie News Writer for Screen Rant, and his screenplays have accrued more than 25 awards and selections in competition. He got his start when his short biography of Augusten Burroughs was published in 2008, and his career has seen him write video game walkthroughs, web content, and interactive fiction for mobile platforms. Tim resides in Durham, NC, with a rabid passion for film, TV, video games, and comics.

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