Kate Winslet Recalls Robert Downey Jr.’s Messy Audition For ‘The Holiday’: He “Did An English Accent, But I Thought He Was Doing Australian”

Robert Downey Jr. was right: Kate Winslet was not a fan of his attempt at a British accent during his fateful audition for The Holiday.

Last July, Downey Jr. and Jimmy Fallon recalled on The Howard Stern Show that they were “called in just as seat fillers,” and that director Nancy Meyers just “needed someone to read with the gals” during auditions.

“We’re sitting there going, ‘It’s about to happen for us,'” Downey Jr. shared.

However, things went south once he read for the role of Graham, which required a British accent and ended up going to Jude Law.

“And I was like, ‘I’ve got to have a better English accent than Jude Law at this point,’” Downey Jr. added. “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.’”

Winslet shared her side of the story when she stopped by The Tonight Show last week, where Fallon, who had read for Miles, brought up the audition, per Variety.

The Titanic star confirmed, “This is a really real story that I remember extremely well.”

Winslet explained to Fallon that she was under the impression that they were just having “a fun read of the script,” and “didn’t realize that [Fallon was] auditioning for the part” that ultimately went to Jack Black.

“I am so sorry you didn’t get it,” she said. “And I’m sorry if I happened to have been mean to you in any way or rude. I don’t think I was, I’m just checking.”

After Fallon clarified that she “was so nice” to him, Winslet recalled that Fallon was “very sick” and “obsessively hand sanitizing,” and eventually proceeded to discuss Downey Jr.’s dialectal downfall.

“And Robert Downey [Jr.] did an English accent, but I thought he was doing Australian,” she remembered. “And I thought, ‘That’s bad, that’s not going to work. And who is going to tell him that that sounds dreadful?”

Fallon also remembered it being an Australian accent, but said he thought that it “sounded great.”

“And I go, ‘This is perfect, but I don’t think the character’s supposed to be Australian,'” he quipped.

Winslet confessed, “It wasn’t actually that great, but that’s really sweet of you to have said that!”

Nonetheless, Fallon and Winslet praised the actor for “winning everything” in the wake of his performance in Oppenheimer.

Later on in the segment, Fallon told Winslet that she’s “in two of the biggest films ever made,” referring to Titanic and Avatar: The Way of Water. The actress recently opened up to PORTER magazine about the downside of the tremendous fame she garnered from after starring in Titanic.

“I felt like I had to look a certain way, or be a certain thing, and because media intrusion was so significant at that time, my life was quite unpleasant,” she revealed.

The Tonight Show airs weeknights at 11:35/10:35c on NBC. The Holiday is streaming on Netflix.