Sometimes getting starstruck sparks a sweet interaction — other times, it leads to crying in your car.
Jackson Rathbone learned this early in his career, when he came face-to-face with two-time Oscar winner, Ron Howard. The Twilight alum recounted the humiliating memory during an Aug. 17 panel at Fan Expo in Chicago, where he was asked if he had any failed audition stories to tell.
“This is the most embarrassing moment of my career for sure. I literally cried in my car for 30 minutes after this,” Rathbone began. “Okay, so you hear me now? I don’t stutter. Growing up, I had a really bad stutter. When I was in 3rd grade, they put me into speech therapy. I’ve been in speech therapy, I’ve done voice lessons, I’ve worked hard on this, y’all, very hard to get where I’m at now.”
But then came Rathbone’s meeting with Howard. The actor, who was years away from starring as Jasper Cullen in the Twilight saga, was up for a role in The Dark Tower, the long-gestating Stephen King adaptation that Howard was at one point attached to direct (he eventually served as a producer on the 2017 film instead helmed by Nikolaj Arcel).
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Jackson Rathbone on stage during Fan Expo Chicago 2025 on August 17, 2025 in Rosemont, Illinois.
“I was being considered for Ron Howard’s film and I was very nervous. Dude, my stutter came back harder than it’s ever happened to me before,” Rathbone said. “He goes, ‘Hey, Jackson, it’s really nice to meet you.’ I’m like, in my head, ‘Freaking Ron Howard knows my name, crazy!’ He’s like, ‘So I heard you’re in a band. Tell me about it.’ And I’m like, yeah, ‘Yeah, I, I, I, I’m, I’m, I’m a, I’m a, I’m- I’m gonna, I’m, I’m in a- I’m in a band.'”
He added, “That’s how I started the meeting and it went downhill from there. I go out to my car and I know it didn’t go well because I was making a fool of myself but Ron Howard is the sweetest man ever. He just kind of laughed it off, just kept going, didn’t even make a deal of it. It was super sweet.”
Rathbone added that the meeting sent him to a “dark place,” sharing that he broke down crying in his car after leaving. But, later on, talking to other actors about their own low points made him feel much better.
“We’ve all had experiences in our lives where we just maybe put our foot in our mouth, and we feel silly,” he noted. “Somebody told me they’re like, ‘Listen, you think that’s the first time that’s happened to Ron Howard? You think it’s the very first time that he’s had someone go in there, audition or read with him and be embarrassed?’ And I was like, ‘No, probably not.’ And they’re like, ‘You’re fine, look forward, don’t look behind.'”
In the end, The Dark Tower‘s film production was so troubled that even if the meeting had gone great, there was no guarantee that Rathbone would’ve held onto his part. J.J. Abrams was originally announced to direct the film in 2007, but it would take a decade for the film to come to fruition, during which time several names were tossed around as stars, including Russell Crowe, Aaron Paul and Liam Neeson. Howard joined the project in 2010, but five years later, was no longer attached to direct. The final product starred Idris Elba, Matthew McConaughey, and Tom Taylor.
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The movie fell short of box office expectations, earning $50.4 million domestically, while its worldwide gross reached $113 million. Critics called it “astonishingly bad,” “generic,” “a complete disaster,” and a film that’s “embarrassed of itself.”
The Gunslinger is set to get another shot at an onscreen translation, with The Haunting of Hill House director Mike Flanagan attached to pen a series.
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