Not Another Teen Movie (2001)

Chris Evans 'lacked all fashion sense' at Not Another Teen Movie audition



Years before he was playing Captain America or starring in a Broadway play, Chris Evans first burst onto the pop culture scene as Jake Wyler, the “Popular Jock” at the center of 2001’s Not Another Teen Movie. In PeopleTV’s new Untold Stories: Teen Movies special about the making of the film, the creators remember Evans’ inauspicious audition.

“Chris Evans came in literally like the last week of casting,” director Joel Gallen says. “This 19-year-old kid from Boston sort of strolled in. I remember he lacked all fashion sense.”

“He did not have a great outfit on,” adds writer Mike Bender.

There were over 100 speaking roles in Not Another Teen Movie, but the biggest star to appear was Molly Ringwald, who portrayed a flight attendant in the airport scene when Evans tries to convince the “Pretty Ugly Girl” Janey Biggs (Chyler Leigh) not to board a plane.

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“One of the exciting things was, after the initial cut of the movie there were a few reshoots, and we decided we needed something bigger to happen in the finale scene at the airport,” writer Andrew Jacobson explains. “Mike and Joel went after Molly Ringwald, who is kind of the most iconic face of the entire teen movie genre.”

“We actually set up a screening in New York just so she’d see the movie basically cut, including the old ending, so she’d see she’d be part of a quality product,” Gallen recalls. “She immediately said she would be happy to do it. That turned her around. She hadn’t wanted to be part of anything that had to do with teen movies.”

Watch the video above for more.