When it comes to big franchises like The Hunger Games movies, it’s always fun to dive into what other big names auditioned for key roles and what could have been. Jennifer Lawrence obviously was chosen for the role of Katniss Everdeen in the YA movies, but tons of other young actors were in the mix. Cheaper By The Dozen and Step Up Alyson Stoner has just shared their grueling experience auditioning for the role when they were 17, and it highlights some issues the former child actor faced.
Stoner has a memoir coming out next week called Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything, where they recall being a Hollywood actor since the age of six. In an excerpt that was released (via Vanity Fair), Stoner recalled that time they tried hard to win the role of Katniss. As Stoner writes:
[T]he role was playing with fire for me. Katniss was characteristically thin—not starving, but small enough to reflect growing up in an underfed district—and muscular from hunting and archery. If I was going to devote myself to checking every box of the character description, I had to commit to strenuous training without fully succumbing to my eating disorder.
Stoner had a personal trainer at the time that helped them stay thin leading up to the audition, and after a month of that, Stoner says they convinced “a world-renowned medical weight loss camp” to approve them to join their program. When they were approved, they ended up doing seven hours of daily exercise, along with going on a calorie deficit that included eating a lot of egg whites and protein shakes. As the excerpt also divulges:
The long shot of it all was never lost on me. But it technically wasn’t unrealistic for a director to pluck an unexpected person from the crowd and make them a star, either. Media loved an underdog story. I’d spent my whole career erring on the side of practicality and it hadn’t amounted to a breakthrough. So this time, I jumped for the moon.
By that time, Stoner had done two Cheaper By The Dozen movies (including with a famed scene with Taylor Lautner by their side), two Step Up movies, and was a voice actor for the Holly Hobbie animated specials. Alyson Stoner wanted to transform their career and thought The Hunger Games could be their ticket in.
However, Stoner was also training to depict a starving teenager while simultaneously struggling with an eating disorder. In retrospect, the actor points out how doctors and trainers should’ve “never permitted an underweight minor” to do that much exercise and dieting, but because Stoner was “training for an acting role,” it was deemed as ok. As they continue:
Other than slipping in a few comments that I was taking the workouts too far, my mother knew she couldn’t stop me. She wasn’t one to enforce limits or check in to understand what I was experiencing internally anyway. Besides, why would she interfere with her mini-me achieving more fame? I held on to my last iota of sanity, reminding myself that if I booked the role, the studio would provide a trainer and nutritionist to make this healthfully sustainable. Just a little longer.’
The program, however, did not work in Stoner’s favor and their “immune system weakened” from all the overtraining. So unfortunately, the actor booked an audition for The Hunger Games and tested positive for strep throat on the same day. This meant their audition was moved from Friday to the casting directors’ last of the day on Monday. Following their audition, here’s what happened:
Somewhere in the abyss, I received the email I had been waiting for: ‘Heard this morning from casting. They have their short list. You aren’t moving forward. You can remove it from your plate.’ Just perfect. I’ve moved on to filling my plate with doughnuts, don’t worry. I sat on my bed with vacant eyes and a distant mind. I didn’t know what to do with myself.
The Hunger Games had all sorts of talented names trying for the role of Katniss, including the likes of Hailee Steinfeld, Saoirse Ronan, Zoey Deutch, Brie Larson, Chloë Grace Moretz, Abigail Breslin and Emma Roberts. Looking back at our report when casting was underway in 2011, there was a troubling description for who Lionsgate was looking for. It apparently asked for a Caucasian woman between the ages of 15 and 30 “who could portray someone ‘underfed but strong,’ and ‘naturally pretty underneath her tomboyishness.’”
The description caused controversy back then, but Stoner’s recollection of the audition shows the real negative implications the whole thing had on them as a teenager. The story certainly serves as a solid teaser for Stoner’s brutally honest memoir that is surely packed with more about what it’s like to be a child star in Hollywood. In the wake of a new cast of Hunger Games actors making Sunrise on the Reaping one of the most hotly-anticipated upcoming book adaptations, here’s hoping the industry has improved in this department in the past 15 years.