Jason Isaacs thought ‘Armageddon’ director called him a terrible actor

Jason Isaacs was still early in his career when he was cast in the 1998 movie Armageddon, in which he played the small part of Dr. Ronald Quincy, the man who eventually came up with the plan that saved all of humanity. But he worried early on that he had blown it with director Michael Bay.

“So my very first day, I do the one scene in which I speak, and Michael goes, ‘Hey, what is that? Theater training?'” Isaacs recalled on Monday’s edition of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast. “And I absolutely shat myself, obviously, thinking I’m gonna be fired. I’m clearly declaiming all over the place. I went, ‘Sorry.’ And my voice shot up five octaves. And he goes, ‘Is that what they teach you in theater school?’ And I thought, Oh my god. This is my worst nightmare. And I scurry over to him, and I go, ‘Was that terrible?’ He goes, ‘No. It was awesome.'”

Bay even made sure the movie’s star, Bruce Willis, had seen Isaacs’ scene. The White Lotus actor told Bay that he was only scheduled to work for eight days on the film with a cast that included Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Steve Buscemi, Owen Wilson, and Michael Clarke Duncan.

“He goes, ‘No. We’ll have you in. I’m gonna give you a clipboard. We’ll put you next to Billy Bob. We’ll throw you a line here and there.'”

And that’s exactly what happened, as Isaacs played the part of the man who pitched the bonkers — yet successful — idea they ended up using to solve the potential end of the world. It involved sending oil drillers up to the asteroid and having them detonate a nuclear bomb. Isaacs was aware of how wild that sounded.

“I remember thinking, ‘This is the low point of my career.’ I was playing ‘the smartest man on the planet,’ as Billy Bob explained to the astronauts what they were gonna do, and I was holding a Papier-mâché asteroid on a stick, thinking, I’m not sure the smart man on the planet will be doing this. Will I ever work again? That’s what I was thinking.”

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The movie was a huge success, of course, becoming the highest-grossing film of the year. Isaacs has gone on to projects including The Patriot and the Harry Potter franchise, in which he portrayed the villainous Lucius Malfoy.