Robert Downey Jr. Details How He Failed The Holiday Audition

1. Director Nancy Meyers wrote her leading ladies Iris and Amanda with Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz in mind. 

“You know, I think a screenwriter would lie to you if they said, ‘I don’t think about anybody when I am writing,'” the famed scribe told ComingSoon.Net. “I can’t imagine it, you know somebody has got to say it and do it. It’s natural to start fantasizing about who is going to be in it.”

2. To be fair, casting Winslet was pretty much a no-brainer. “If you’re writing a 30-year-old woman in England you obviously think of Kate Winslet, she’s just one of the great actresses,” Meyers explained to ComingSoon.Net.

3. While Winslet was the inspiration for Iris, the Titanic star was convinced she was going to be fired from the movie. 

“I’ve never done a romantic comedy or something that is labelled as that before,” Winslet explained to About.com in 2006. “I was so excited to do something new and also nervous you know? The worry of, ‘Can I be funny?’ It’s a terrible thing to be concerned about. And Jude [Law] and I would speak on the telephone a lot before we started shooting. ‘Oh my god, they’re going to fire us! They’re going to recast. What if we don’t make them laugh?’ You know, very nervous about the whole thing.”