Jason Isaacs Used A Real Gun In His Audition For John Malkovich's Role In Con Air

Jason Isaacs "s***" himself when he was handed a gun in an audition.

The 57-year-old actor was trying out for the role of Cyrus 'The Virus' Grissom in 1997's Con Air — a part which eventually went to John Malkovich — and decided to improvise and use a pencil as a weapon, but both he and director Simon West were left horrified when a camera assistant passed him a real firearm to use instead.

"He very oddly made the decision to give the part to John Malkovich instead.

"But I remember, at this audition, I went in. There's a guy who's operating a camera. He's pointing at you. You go to read the scene, and the scene was the character holding somebody up with a gun.

"So, I grabbed a pencil and I said, 'I'll use a pencil as a gun.'

"The camera assistant, operating the camera, went, 'Hold on. Hold on a second. Here, grab that,' and held out a gun to me.

"I s*** myself, obviously. He went, 'Look, you're cool. The safety's on.'

"My voice shot up three octaves. I went all Jerry Lewis, and I went, 'Oh, my God! It's a real gun!'

"I remember Simon being as wide eyed as I was. He'd been working with this guy for however long and didn't know he had a gun tucked in his belt."

Jason has reunited with Simon on Skyfire', in which he plays Jack Harris, a businessman who builds a luxury resort on an active volcano, only for things to go badly wrong.

The Chinese production also stars Hannah Quinlivan, Wang Xueqi and Shawn Dou.

He said: "Being surrounded by Chinese people making a film, when you don't speak any Mandarin or Cantonese, where everybody apart from Simon and the director of photography is speaking a different language all day, was like being deaf or something.

"I couldn't connect to anybody, apart from in the scenes when I'm meant to connect."— BANG

Photo: TPG News/Click Photos