When an actor goes into an audition, they have to try and figure out a specific way to stand out amongst the crowd so that they can land the part. Tyler Mane dreamed up a particularly ingenious plan ahead of his audition for the role of Sabretooth in the original 2000 X-Men film, as he not only leafed his way through dozens of comics, but he bought fangs and Polydent so that he could look like the character, too. It turned out to be a stroke of genius on his part, because director Bryan Singer was so impressed that he cast Mane as Sabretooth. After revealing that he'd bought a whole heap of comic books as preparation for his Sabretooth audition, Mane recalled:
Then I bought fangs and Polydent and got into character. Very method of me, right? I walked into my meeting with the fangs in place and met a very young-looking Bryan Singer. As auditions go, it was probably the easiest one I've had. He jumped up on the coffee table and asked me to choke him. I snarled with my plastic fangs, and that's how movies get started, I guess.
Talk about making an entrance. Clearly Bryan Singer was hugely impressed, and I'll guess a little flabbergasted, too, by Tyler Mane's efforts as soon after he cast him in the film. It sounds like when it came to portraying Sabretooth, Mane was a model actor to work with, too, as the former wrestler insisted during the same interview with The Hollywood Reporter that the director never had to scream at him to provoke an angrier performance. Hugh Jackman previously admitted that Singer used to scream at him in an attempt to make him a more furious Wolverine, which is further confirmation that the Australian actor is just an all-around wonderful human being.
Tyler Mane's Sabretooth was a key component of X-Men, as he was the henchman to Ian McKellen's Magneto. This also saw him go toe to toe with Hugh Jackman's Wolverine during the final sequence on top of the Statue Of Liberty. Sabretooth actually had the better of Logan in the fight sequence, too, but then Jean Grey and Cyclops had to get involved. You can relive their exchange of fisticuffs atop New York's most famous landmark below.
After falling off the Statue Of Liberty to what looked like his death, there was no chance of Tyler Mane reprising his role on-screen in either X2 or X-Men: The Last Stand, though he did voice the character in X-Men: The Official Game. Sadly for Mane, 20th Century Fox decided to replace him as Sabretooth with Liev Schreiber for X-Men Origins: Wolverine. One can only hope that in order for Schreiber to top Mane's original audition and secure the role, he shaved a wolf and glued its hair all over his body.
