Jessie Buckley reveals she auditioned for Cats movie musical

Jessie Buckley has revealed that she auditioned for the critically panned movie adaptation of Cats.

The Hamnet actress has revealed that she failed to snag a role in Tom Hooper's 2019 movie musical - an adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's famed stage production - after giving "the worst audition of (her) life".

"I actually auditioned to be a cat once," she shared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on Thursday. "Honestly, I gave the worst audition of my life. Well, how do you be a cat?!"

Buckley explained that she had one audition with the Les Misérables director and progressed to a feline movement session with Wayne McGregor, the resident choreographer of England's Royal Ballet, and failed miserably at moving like a cat.

"He's got this incredibly sleek, terrifyingly minimalist studio and when you don't know how to be a cat in the first instance, when you've got nothing around you (to work with)," she recalled. "It was so hot. I was sweating. I was like licking my paw. I was trying to make leaps. This guy is so beautiful and lithe and I'm just like a hoof of an Irish woman leaping across and licking her paws."

At the end of her story, the Oscar nominee quipped, "Obviously, I didn't get it."

Buckley did not share which character she was auditioning for. The ensemble cast ultimately featured James Corden, Judi Dench, Idris Elba, Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Taylor Swift, and Rebel Wilson, among others.

The BAFTA winner had been at the start of her movie acting career at the time, with films like Beast, Wild Rose and Judy under her belt. Missing out on the Cats role turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as the film was a major critical and commercial failure.

The Irish star shared the story after coming under fire for a resurfaced November 2025 interview in which she declared that she doesn't like cats. In the new interview, she insisted she was "a lover of cats".