She didn't have it at 'hello': Patricia Arquette on how she 'blew' her Jerry Maguire audition

For an actor, there's always that one part that got away, or if you're terrible at auditioning, maybe a few parts.

At the SAG Awards on Sunday, Patricia Arquette, a two-time winner who was nominated with the cast of Severance, recalled a time she "blew" an audition for a film she thought she had in the bag, 1996's Tom Cruise athletic supporting rom-com Jerry Maguire.

"I'm a notoriously bad auditioner," the Oscar winner told Variety on the SAG Awards red carpet. "So everyone was saying, 'Oh, this is just a formality, you're gonna read with Tom Cruise for Jerry Maguire, but this is your part, you got it,' and I blew it."

Written and directed by Cameron Crowe, the film brought Cruise his second Best Actor Oscar nomination, showed standout Cuba Gooding Jr both the money and the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and made a star out of leading lady Renée Zellweger.

Ultimately Arquette thinks Zellweger was the right choice. "I actually think she was better for it," the Boyhood star said, "and she was great."

"I'm a terrible auditioner cause I don't feel like that's finished work," Arquette explained. "I wanna build layers with the character and with that other person and pivot and change according to how my character feels about them from take to take."

Arquette also mentions auditioning for The Doors with Brad Pitt in the lead role of Jim Morrison, and how she only found out recently from a podcast that the casting director thought they were both "perfect." Arquette's part went to Meg Ryan and Pitt's to Val Kilmer.

"There's a lot you don't know," Arquette added. "As an actor, you gotta go in and do your best, take a chance, have fun and you gotta let it go, because it's really out of your hands."

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