The Best Movie Actor In Hollywood! Chapter 79

Opening the casting call for The Mummy Returns, Matthew immediately zeroed in on the role Helen was meant to submit him for.

The role had minimal screen time but carried immense weight. He even recalled the character vividly from a bootleg he'd once seen, a part that had left a lasting impression.

The Scorpion King!

A powerful, brave, warlike king who sold his soul to Anubis.

Reading the physical requirements, Matthew couldn't help but glance at his own reflection. He was incredibly fit—not with exaggerated, bulging muscles, but with a lean, powerful build honed by his recent military training.

This wasn't inflated ego, but a confidence born from his actual condition.

He reviewed the casting requirements for The Mummy Returns listed on the role's breakdown. In terms of appearance, he knew he wouldn't have a problem.

A role like this didn't demand exceptional acting skills, which Matthew felt made it a perfect fit for him, but landing it would be incredibly difficult. Just as Helen had said, The Mummy Returns was the sequel to the blockbuster hit The Mummy, and the production hardly needed to look for new talent beyond its established cast.

"It's worth a shot," Matthew thought as he continued scrolling. The Mummy Returns was scheduled to shoot primarily in the UK and Morocco from July to November, which meant a potential scheduling conflict with Almost Famous.

If the audition for Almost Famous fell through, he could still go after this part.

Finally, he glanced at the breakdown for The Fast and the Furious. It was for a completely ordinary, unremarkable minor supporting role.

Matthew didn't give it much thought, leaving it to Helen to submit his materials as another backup.

This strategy of casting a wide net to catch more fish all came down to the auditions and the work he put in.

Setting aside the information on The Mummy Returns and The Fast and the Furious, Matthew began to focus on Almost Famous—the project he and Helen were targeting, and for which the Angel Acting Agency had already compiled a substantial amount of research.

He pulled the file he'd received that afternoon from his satchel and began to review it carefully.

The script was a closely guarded secret. It was nearly impossible for anyone without an official contract to get their hands on it, and even those who did were bound by strict non-disclosure agreements.

The file didn't contain the script, of course—only a few plot descriptions pieced together from hearsay.

What was certain was that Almost Famous was a film about rock and roll, centered on a rock band, a boy aspiring to be a music critic, and a charming female assistant.

The team at the Angel Acting Agency had compiled this research specifically for him, basing it on these details and the information the production team had released about the auditioning roles.

It might not be one hundred percent accurate, but Matthew trusted the Angel Agency's capabilities. After all, their research had been instrumental in helping him land the role of Ronald Speirs.

Of course, since Almost Famous wasn't based on a novel, there was far less source material to draw from compared to when he was preparing for his Band of Brothers audition.

Matthew first skimmed the material, which was divided into several sections based on the characters' idiosyncrasies and the common themes of rock culture: drugs, sex, touring, to name a few.

Drugs. It went without saying. Even someone like Matthew knew that rock and roll and drugs had been inseparable from the very beginning.

It was no exaggeration to say that, for a large part of the American music scene, a rocker who didn't do drugs wasn't considered a real star.

Anyone who'd been around Hollywood knew that the filthiest scene wasn't the one with actors and models, but the one in rock and roll. A successful band—male or female—wasn't considered a real rock band unless its members had slept with their fair share of men and women, or thrown a few orgies.

Matthew focused his research on the term "groupie," a concept entirely new to him, one he'd never encountered before but needed to understand. The character he was vying for, Russell Hammond, was the band's guitarist and had a complicated relationship with the female lead. According to the research, she was supposedly the band's personal assistant but could, in fact, be a groupie.

The person who'd compiled the information, likely guessing Matthew knew little about the subject, had included a detailed explanation of the term.

Simply put, the groupie phenomenon emerged in the 1960s during the rock music boom. The term referred to female fans who sought to initiate or maintain romantic relationships with rock stars. Some people even used the cruder term "starfucker" instead of "groupie."

As Matthew understood it, if rock stars were gods, then groupies were their fanatical worshippers.

The file even cited the example of one Bebe Buell, one of the most beautiful women of the seventies, nicknamed a "rock muse." She was so stunning that she began openly sleeping with rock stars at fifteen or sixteen. Later in life, she was so sought after that famous musicians would practically beg on their knees to sleep with her, even when she was pregnant.

Her child was the famous actress, Liv Tyler.

According to the file, rock and roll and groupies were two inseparable parts of the same whole.

Based on the information gathered by the Angel Agency, the relationship between Matthew's potential role and the female lead—a part already secured by Kate Hudson—was exactly this kind of complicated dynamic.

Of course, this was all just speculation. After all, the researchers hadn't seen the script for Almost Famous and were forced to piece things together.

Furthermore, the character might be bisexual.

Matthew knew nothing about that world and wondered for a moment if he should try to find people from that community to talk to. Auditions were scheduled for late May, with primary casting expected around the middle of the year, which didn't leave him much time.

Fortunately, the auditions for The Mummy Returns were in early June, and The Fast and the Furious was even later, so there was no scheduling conflict with Almost Famous. If he didn't land this role, he could still attend the other two auditions.

The only tricky part was that the audition for The Mummy Returns was in London, while the one for The Fast and the Furious was in Los Angeles.

But those were minor problems that a plane ticket could solve.

Matthew didn't leave his house for the rest of the day, even ordering dinner in. He meticulously studied the research provided by the Angel Agency, forming a clear picture of the characters and the roles he would be competing for.

In the days that followed, he set everything else aside and threw himself into preparing for the audition. Even though Helen hadn't yet heard back after submitting his application for Almost Famous, there was certainly no harm in getting a head start.

To that end, Matthew stayed in close contact with Helen. He asked the Angel Agency to connect him with a former guitarist from a moderately successful band to hear about his wild experiences back in the day. He also tried to contact several former groupies, most of whom refused, though one was willing to share her story.

The woman, whose name was Lori Markdos, told him things that made his jaw drop.

She described, in graphic detail, the exploits of Mick Jagger, the former lead singer of the Rolling Stones.

"Mick had a legendary reputation in those circles for his love of beautiful women and his polygamy, especially with models young enough to be his daughters. He was rail-thin, but he had a big tool and a mouth that could give Steven Tyler a run for his money... you know, the singer from Aerosmith. The Rolling Stones logo—the tongue sticking out—that's the best way to describe Mick."

Lori even rolled up her sleeve to show him her arm, which, even after all these years, was still covered in track marks and looked slightly discolored.

"I chose this life," Lori said, clearly having no regrets. As she was leaving, she told Matthew, "Those were the glory days. You felt like anything was possible, and being reckless didn't get you AIDS. It's not like now, where everyone in show business is like a scared dog, terrified of tarnishing their reputation. The paparazzi snap your picture the second you step outside. That era is long gone."

Talking with the guitarist and Lori Markdos had been immensely beneficial, giving Matthew a much deeper understanding of the rock scene.

But he did more than that to master the role. In a metropolis like Los Angeles, there was no shortage of bisexual people, but they were hard to find. Matthew had no choice but to call Helen and ask for her help.

Helen told him to wait for news. Matthew even used his free time to buy a computer and waited for several more days, but she still couldn't find the right person for him to talk to.

There were plenty of such people in Hollywood circles, but they weren't about to openly discuss their private lives.

Matthew had to give up for the time being and just wait for the Almost Famous production team to call him in for an audition.