Reese Witherspoon talks ‘overlooking’ Robert De Niro early in her career

Reese Witherspoon has just weighed in on the earliest mishap she ever experienced, during the early days of her career.

The actor broke everything down during the course of her appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

The conversation began once Witherspoon took a trip down memory lane and reminisced about auditioning about De Niro’s 1991 thriller film Cape Fear.

“I’m not in that movie because I got so scared when I walked in the room,” she recalled feeling in the thick of it.

“I didn’t know who Robert De Niro was, so I was standing outside talking to the receptionist. She was like, ‘You know he’s the most important actor of our time, right?’”

At one point the receptionist’s comments elevated her anxiety even more,

“I was 14. I’d never seen Goodfellas. I’d never seen The Godfather. So it totally got on my nerves.”

“I thought, ‘He’s never gonna remember that I bricked that audition,’ ” she told Kimmel. “And he was like, ‘I remember you.’ I was like, ‘Me?’ He’s like, ‘Oh yeah. You’re the one who couldn’t say the word.’ Oh, my God! This is so bad.”