A Walk to Remember (2002): When it came to his breakout role as Landon Carter in the tear-jerking adaptation of Nicholas Sparks‘ novel, West noted one memorable aspect of his audition process.
“I never saw anyone’s name on the call sheet, I never had to freak out by going, ‘Oh my god, I recognize this name and I’m competing against this person, this is terrible,'” he said. “None of that kind of stuff. They blocked us in a way where I think we had to our windows, so there was no pressure besides the normal pressure of trying to get the job.”
West recalled only one audition for the movie, with director Adam Shankman bringing him and Mandy Moore, his top picks for the lead couple, in for a chemistry read.
“We sat around, I swear to God, for a couple of hours, reading a lot of scenes besides just the audition scenes, a lot of scenes from the actual script,” he said. “And I think we were young, not paying attention, but I think he was paying attention to see if there was anything there since we were his favorites. And he wanted to make us look good in this audition so that when the studio looked at it that they would listen to him.”