Jonah Hill auditioned for The Wolf of Wall Street and did his scene with Leonardo DiCaprio roughly 50 times. Nothing worked. Scorsese cleared the room, had Hill sit silently beside him for 20 minutes while he read the newspaper — then asked for one take and got it. The silence wasn't wasted time; it was the actual direction. By stripping away performance anxiety through enforced stillness, Scorsese forced Hill into the only state where the real character could emerge: relaxed, unguarded, off-script in his own head.
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