It seems Robert Downey Jr.’s English accent got better between his audition for The Holiday and his starring role in 2009’s Sherlock Holmes.
Kate Winslet quipped that Downey, 58, had auditioned for the cult-classic 2006 rom-com with a “bad” English accent. (Previously, Jimmy Fallon had revealed that he and Downey auditioned for the roles that went to Jack Black and Jude Law, respectively.)
“This is a really real story, which I remember extremely well,” Winslet, 48, said during a Wednesday, February 28, appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “We were sort of told that you were coming in to do … well, I thought it was a reading. We were going to have a fun reading of the script, I didn’t realize you were auditioning for the part, I’m so sorry you didn’t get it.”
Winslet also apologized if she was “mean” or “rude,” which Fallon, 49, said she was not.
“It was a hotel room somewhere on the Upper East Side, and Robert Downey did an English accent, but I thought he was doing Australian,” she added. “I thought, ‘That’s bad. That’s not going to work and who’s going to tell him that sounds dreadful.’ … It wasn’t actually that great.”
They discussed the trajectory of Downey’s career, with Winslet praising him for “winning everything” after the success of Oppenheimer. (Downey has won various awards for his portrayal of Lewis Strauss in the movie, which was released in July 2023. He is also nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards, which will take place next month.)
Winslet and Fallon continued to discuss The Holiday, with the actress revealing that she’s recognized more for the Christmas movie than her star-making turn in 1997’s Titanic.
“People come up to me in the streets more about The Holiday and the episode of Extras that I did than Titanic, I promise you,” she said. “Especially at Christmas.”
Winslet appeared as Iris Simpkins in the Nancy Meyers–directed film, which also stars Cameron Diaz, Law and Black.
“What’s so lovely is that mothers and daughters come up to me in the grocery store and they say, ‘OK, we just love The Holiday. It’s our little ritual at Christmas.’ And they have things that they eat every year,” Winslet added. “They sit down, it’s a tradition, and I just love that. That’s something I never would have expected, this sort of mother-daughter connection around a film like that. It’s so nice. It’s lovely.”
