Job interviews are hard. Everyone knows that sinking feeling in their stomach when they've got so far but just need to cross that extra little hurdle.
And things aren't much easier when you're an actor. After all, if your entire job hinges on embodying a character, you really need to sell yourself.
But one unconventional tactic I'm not sure many people have tried is going full method acting... to the point that they'd pull out a knife! Well, Courtney Gains, who played Malachi in 1984's Children of the Corn, decided to take a pretty risky approach, per People - by pulling a knife on the reader opposite him.
In case you don't remember the horror flick, it was originally a short story written by Stephen King. It depicts a story which, among other things, describes a town where only children live - because they had killed all the adults.
Malachi was one such child living in the town of Gatlin. And, so, as you'd expect, that character would have to be pretty darn crazy. Which was exactly the vibe Gains was trying to embody.
"[The casting director] would tell stories, tell people to 'never do that' - which is actually very good advice, but it helped get me the job," he recalled. "You take a risk, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't."
"There are definitely stories about me getting that job," he explained. Why, you ask?
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He Pulled a Knife on His Acting Partner
"I sat in the middle of the floor cross-legged in a meditation position, looking at everybody that walked in the room like, 'I'm going to eat you for lunch... I'm getting this job.'"
He had put a fake knife in his pocket prior to the audition. But he ended up doing it during the audition - pulling it on Jeff Greenberg, one of the readers. He later ended up becoming a "huge casting director".
"He completely freaked," Gains recalled about the knife. "But out of the corner of my eye, I could see the director and the producer turned to each other and go, 'Hmm.' And this unknown 18-year-old took the room over, you know what I'm saying? Took the power over the adults."
That's likely why he ended up getting picked for the stellar horror movie, after all. He embodied exactly what those kids in Gatlin did.
