Taylor Swift recalls how embarrassed to Talk to Eddie Redmayne During Les Mis Audition

Taylor Swift realised after her unsuccessful audition for the 2012 movie Les Misérables that she would have, could have, and should have spoken to Eddie Redmayne.

Swift appeared in both of the roles that were central to the love triangle with Marius, played by Eddie Redmayne, in the Oscar-winning film directed by Tom Hooper.

"Basically I was up for two roles," Swift said during The Graham Norton Show opposite Redmayne reported by Entertainment Weekly.

"I had the look of Cosette and the range vocally of Éponine, so it was established I was there for a good time but not for a long time. I wasn’t going to get the role."

While Éponine yearns for him, Marius, played by Redmayne, falls in love with Cosette. When Swift went for the part, Redmayne had already been cast because the Midnights singer referred to him as one of her "favourite" actors.

"This isn’t an experience I am going to get again in my life," Swift reminisced at the time. However, her experience was more like a fairytale gone bad.

"When I got there they put me in full 19th-century street urchin costume and told me they were going to paint my teeth brown and I was like, ‘You are going to do that after I meet Eddie Redmayne right?'" Swift said.

"They made me look like death and it became a nightmare. When I met Eddie, I didn’t open my mouth to speak!"

Redmayne also was nervous meeting the Grammy winner, saying, "I thought we would just be singing off each other — I didn’t know we would be in each other’s arms. My overriding memory of it is that I had pizza and garlic dough balls beforehand and all I could think about was my garlic breath while Taylor was dying in my arms and I was trying to show emotion."

The Love Story singer "rather brilliantly auditioned" for the part of Éponine, but director Hooper eventually couldn't cast her because there was scepticism that Swift "was a girl people would overlook." 

Swift was similarly denied a part in Twilight: New Moon.

"It didn’t quite feel right for her for the most flattering reason," Hooper told Vulture at the time. 

"I didn’t cast her, but I got very close to it."