Star Wars star John Boyega may be the lead in Pacific Rim Uprising, but it`s Cailee Spaeny who steals the show. Her role as the scavenger and Jaeger pilot-in-training Amara Namani is the 19-year-old actress`s first major gig, and the story of how she got the job from all the way out in Missouri is pretty compelling.`I`ve been in Missouri for four years auditioning and driving from Missouri to LA, back and forth, you know, four years of `No`s. So you kind of get to a point where you`re just like, `OK, I`m just going to try whatever I can right now,`` Spaeny told GameSpot.Typical audition tapes--standing in front of a white wall reciting your lines--must start to all look the same to casting directors, Spaeny reckoned. And as an aspiring actor, you get bored of that, too, she said.`It wasn`t realistic in my head,` she said. `How do you do a realistic audition if you`re not doing the action sequences in the scene? So I`m like, `If I`m going to do this, I`m going to go all the way.``I rubbed dirt on my face, I think my air conditioning was broke and I was actually sweating--it was super hot in the room, I remember--and it was an action scene between me and [John Boyega]`s character, and I threw myself on the ground. I had an actual pole and set up a stack of pillows to hit the person. I used a remote as Jaeger buttons, and then a little two-foot step stool to get inside my Jaeger, Scrapper. And apparently it caught their attention.`Pacific Rim Uprising director Steven DeKnight and casting director Sarah Finn later told her that the tape had come in at the last possible second. When Spaeny flew to LA for callbacks, she still wasn`t confident that her bold performance had done her any favors. Her second audition was more traditional, and she felt certain she`d blown it. But then she played a scene with Boyega himself.`It was the most fun I had ever had in an audition,` she said. `He`s so good and he`s so fun to play with, he`s not like an actor that just leaves you h ...
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