Russell Crowe denies having terrible My Best Friend's Wedding audition with Julia Roberts: 'Pure imagination'

Sounds like Russell Crowe is never gonna be Jell-Okay with a recent jab at his acting skills.

Back in February, Vulture published an excerpt from Scott Meslow's book From Hollywood With Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy, in which My Best Friend's Wedding director P.J. Hogan claimed that Crowe gave "one of the worst table reads I've ever experienced" for the movie. Now, more than eight months later, the Gladiator star would like to set the record straight.

"Pure imagination on behalf of this director. I did not audition for this film," Crowe tweeted Friday. "I have never done a table read with the actress mentioned. Would be funny if it wasn't so pointless."

In the excerpt, Hogan said that Crowe was his "first choice" to star opposite Julia Roberts as her best friend and love interest Michael O'Neal in the 1997 romantic comedy after his wife, screenwriter and director Jocelyn Moorhouse, worked with Crowe on the 1991 film Proof. He added, however, that Roberts had final "casting approval" when it came to her costar, so Hogan invited Crowe to a table read with the actress that allegedly went off the rails pretty quickly.

"I don't know what went wrong," he explained. "It was one of the worst table reads I've ever experienced. Russell was seated opposite Julia. He gripped that script, and he stared at that script, and he didn't look at her once."

To make matters worse, Hogan claimed that Crowe proceeded to read "every line in a monotone" and actively avoided Roberts' gaze.

"At one point, Julia was literally leaning over the table, staring, like, inches from Russell's face, trying to make eye contact. And he wouldn't look at her," he said. "At the end of the reading, Russell came up to me and said, 'I thought that went pretty well.' And then I knew: Russell was not going to be in My Best Friend's Wedding."

While the excerpt noted that Matthew McConaughey, Matthew Perry, and Edward Burns were all in the running for the role, it was Dermot Mulroney who came out victorious in the end, rounding out a star-studded cast that included Roberts, Cameron Diaz, Rupert Everett, and Philip Bosco.

Representatives for Hogan and Roberts did not immediately respond to EW's requests for comment.

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