Anna Faris Talks Being Broke When She Landed Her Big Role In Scary Movie

scary movie anna faris

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Most people who decide to go into creative fields have a tough time making a living at it, especially when they first start out. The same tends to be true for those who want to take a shot at making acting their career of choice, seeing as how, even now, opportunities for that business aren't evenly dispersed across the country and can have a pretty daunting entry process even if you do happen to live in someplace where the jobs are plentiful. Everyone has to get their start somehow, and Anna Faris recently recalled how broke she was right before landing her starring role in Scary Movie.

While Anna Faris has now long been a respected comedy actress, with several films under her belt and a long-running stint on the hit sitcom Mom on her resume, she struggled before nabbing her part as Cindy in 2000s megahit comedy / horror spoof, Scary Movie. This is the twentieth anniversary of the movie, and Faris recently recounted how she got her first movie role to Variety. As you might expect, it wasn't easy:

I started the audition with my mom recording me on one of those big, old VHS cameras hoisted on her shoulder. And then with the second scene I went to my neighbors and I was like, ‘My mom can’t do this audition with me because it’s way too raunchy. Can you film it for me?’ So I sent it in, and they asked me to come down. I packed a tiny bag and stayed on a friend’s couch in Burbank and bummed rides to go down for these auditions. They kept asking me to stay, so eventually I had to go buy some new clothes, which at the time it felt like, ‘I can’t even afford a cab, I certainly can’t afford a hotel.’

Man, the price of getting into the business, right? It's a very good thing that Anna Faris at least had enough friends in the area so that she had a place to stay and people to get rides from for her various auditions, otherwise it sounds like her pre-Scary Movie vetting may have ended in so much stress that she couldn't have delivered the kind of performances that ended up getting her the gig.

Obviously, her effort and time spent living off of the kindness of friends was well worth it. Scary Movie went on to make $278 million worldwide, on a budget of only about $19 million. Along with leading to four sequels (with the most recent being released in 2013), the film also got Anna Faris and her career off to a major start.

The Edmonds, Washington native went from having a few small roles in short films, TV movies or movies which history has forgotten, to roles in films like The Hot Chick, Lost in Translation, Brokeback Mountain, Waiting...,The House Bunny, Observe and Report, What's Your Number, Keanu, and Overboard, along with reprising her Scary Movie role in three of the sequels. And, along with seven seasons (and counting) on Mom, Faris has also spent time on Entourage, Friends and King of The Hill.

While it was a bit of a tough start for Anna Faris, it's clear that Scary Movie came around at the right time for her, and helped her get established, which is a good thing for all of us.

You can stream Scary Movie on Amazon Prime, but for more on everything movie and TV related, be sure to stick with CinemaBlend. And, to see what's coming, check out our 2020 movie release schedule!

Adrienne Jones
Senior Content Creator

Covering The Witcher, Outlander, Virgin River, Sweet Magnolias and a slew of other streaming shows, Adrienne Jones is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend, and started in the fall of 2015. In addition to writing and editing stories on a variety of different topics, she also spends her work days trying to find new ways to write about the many romantic entanglements that fictional characters find themselves in on TV shows. She graduated from Mizzou with a degree in Photojournalism.