For the Oscar nominees, all the red carpets lead to the same place – the Kodak Theatre on Feb. 27. But their journeys couldn’t have started any differently.
While established stars like Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio got their roles with a simple phone call, some of the others – like “Sideways” stars Thomas Haden Church and Virginia Madsen – faced auditions that were anything but simple.
THOMAS HADEN CHURCH
This 43-year-old Texas actor gave the clothes off his back – literally – to land the role of the decadent lothario Jack in “Sideways.”
At the casting call, Church was asked to do one of the most emotional scenes in the movie, when Jack has lost his clothes (you’ll have to see the movie) and runs back to Miles’ hotel room in fear.
“I just told Alexander, ‘You are going to have to forgive me, but I’ll be stripping down right now,'” Church tells The Post. “I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
But it impressed director Alexander Payne.
“He was the only actor we talked to who took his clothes off for the audition,” says producer Michael London.
“And if a guy’s going to get naked for a part, you’ve got to pay attention to him.”
Until then, though, Church had faced nothing but frustration in Hollywood.
After five seasons on “Wings” and the short-lived “Ned and Stacey,” Church suffered through plenty of direct-to-video dreck – and near misses for bigger movies like “Ace Ventura,” “Quiz Show” and “Saving Private Ryan.”
He also came close to being cast in Payne’s last movie, “About Schmidt.”
“For a long time, it was between me and Dermot Mulroney for that part,” Church says.
Payne ultimately chose Mulroney, but he didn’t forget about Church, even as some of Hollywood’s biggest names approached him about playing Jack.
“Brad Pitt was interested in it,” Church says, “and George Clooney took Alexander out to lunch to talk about it.”
But Payne never wanted such a big star, screen-testing instead actors like Kevin Bacon and Liev Schreiber.
“In the end, it came down to me and Matt Dillon,” says Church.
“Of course, the studio always wanted it to be Pitt or Clooney. They told Alexander if he did it with one of them, he’d get $30 million to make the movie.
“When he picked me, they said, ‘OK, here’s $16 million.'”
VIRGINIA MADSEN
Just 10 years ago, Madsen quit acting and left Hollywood.
“She had reached a place in her career where she didn’t expect another shot,” says “Sideways” producer London.
Madsen trudged through the ’80s as a bombshell in movies like 1987’s “Slamdance,” but then got fed up with Hollywood and moved to New Mexico with her then-boyfriend, soap opera actor Antonio Sabato Jr.
After Sabato left her, Madsen went back to acting to support their son, Jack, now 10. She got work in forgettable fare such as 1995’s “The Prophecy” and 1999’s “The Haunting,” but nothing really satisfied.
“I was on a low plateau for a long time,” she tells The Post.
About four years ago, she almost quit again. “I turned down this really bad, low-budget horror movie – something about millions of rats – even though I really needed the paycheck,” she recalls.
“My house was going into foreclosure, but I took a leap of faith.”
And that’s when things started to turn around – and then two years ago, she read the “Sideways” script and saw a kindred spirit in Maya, the time-ravaged waitress who falls for the sad-sack Miles.
“I identified so much with her,” recalls Madsen, 41. “As soon as I read it, I said, this just has to be me.”
“Sideways” director Alexander Payne considered hundreds of Mayas before Madsen came to his office to read, London recalls.
At her audition, Madsen did the two scenes that all the other actresses had read – the one where Maya first meets Miles and the one where she breaks up with him.
“Then I told Alexander how much I loved the part where Maya and Miles talk about wine,” Madsen recalls. “So he asked me to read it.”
That unprepared speech, says London, won Madsen the role.
“Her wine soliloquy was just so mindbogglingly great, we had to take her.”
IMELDA STAUNTON
“There’s no director who works like Mike Leigh,” says Imelda Staunton – and that’s especially true when it comes to the audition that got her the Best Actress-nominated role of an illegal abortionist in 1950s England in “Vera Drake.”
Staunton, an acclaimed British stage actress, didn’t prepare a monologue.
Instead, she just went into Leigh’s office and sat there for a half-hour – in silence.
“He didn’t want me to speak,” Staunton, 49, tells The Post.
“He asked me to create an introverted character and just be that person, but without talking.”
While Staunton sat quietly in character, Leigh “just watched,” she recalls.
Staunton insists that the experience wasn’t awkward.
“I was so into being this character that I didn’t even think about it being strange,” she says.
And two days later, she got the call: The role was hers.
That was only the beginning of what Staunton calls “an adventure, to say the least.”
Every Leigh movie begins with six months of improvised rehearsals, which he uses as inspiration to write the script.
Even once shooting begins, Leigh never shows the complete screenplay to his actors.
“You’re not supposed to know anything about the other characters that your character wouldn’t know,” Staunton explains.
JAMIE FOXX
Many awards-watchers call Foxx the odds-on favorite to win the Oscar for his uncanny impersonation of Ray Charles in the Best Picture-nominated biopic “Ray.”
But none of it would have happened if he hadn’t impressed Charles himself during their meeting two years ago in the legend’s L.A. studio.
“The first thing Ray said was, ‘Let me check these fingers out,'” recalls Foxx, 37, who went to college on a piano scholarship before switching to comedy and acting.
“He said, ‘If you can play the blues, Jamie, you can do anything.'”
The pair traded licks, and Foxx was able to keep up – at first.
But then Charles laid down a complicated Thelonious Monk bebop riff that stopped Foxx cold.
“It was the equivalent of riding a mechanical bull when you’ve had too many drinks,” the actor recalls.
“You just fly all the way out into the bar.”
Foxx just couldn’t do the riff, and Charles teased him mercilessly.
“Ray really put Jamie through his paces,” says director Taylor Hackford. “He was pretty rough on him.”
When Foxx hit one particularly sour note, Charles barked at him.
“He goes, ‘The notes are right there under your fingers, Jamie. You just have to take the time out to find them, young man.'”
It took 15 minutes, but Foxx finally figured out the tricky lick, and when he did, Charles jumped off the piano bench.
“Ray himself anointed Jamie at that point,” Hackford recalls.
“He said, ‘This is it. This is the kid. He’s got it!'”