By the time Dafne Keen walked out of one of the most important auditions of her young life, she was convinced she had ruined it.

She had already survived a lengthy casting process for Logan, the dark 2017 Wolverine film starring Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart. She had submitted multiple self-tapes, performed physical routines and finally reached an in-person chemistry test with Jackman.

Then nerves took over.

Years later, Keen would remember the performance in unforgiving terms, saying she had “fumbled it” and describing the audition as terrible. But what happened immediately afterward mattered far more: instead of accepting that she had blown her chance, the 11-year-old asked to go back into the room and try again.

That decision helped turn a relatively unknown young actress into one of the most memorable characters in the modern X-Men films.

Logan Needed a Child Who Could Do Almost Everything

Director James Mangold had created an unusually difficult casting problem for himself.

Laura, also known as X-23, could not simply be an adorable child standing beside Wolverine. She needed to feel dangerous enough to challenge Logan, vulnerable enough to need him and physically convincing during intense action sequences.

Mangold wanted someone roughly 9 to 12 years old who could speak Spanish, handle demanding physical work and carry emotionally heavy scenes opposite experienced actors such as Jackman and Stewart. He later described Laura as the missing piece of the film’s central triangle.

Casting director Priscilla John searched widely. According to Vanity Fair, more than 500 children were considered as the search expanded across Britain and eventually into Spain. Keen, the daughter of British actor Will Keen and Spanish actress María Fernández Ache, was living in Madrid and had already appeared with her father in the television series The Refugees.

Her first audition material hardly looked conventional.

Rather than simply standing in front of a camera and reading dialogue, Keen moved through her home, climbed furniture and showed the physical confidence the role required. Mangold later recalled receiving footage shot by her father in which she climbed bookshelves, jumped down and performed scenes with a natural quality that immediately caught his attention.

Keen has said that she and her parents became increasingly playful with the self-tapes, choreographing little stunt sequences before she started the scenes. She might flip into position and then begin delivering her lines.

It was not, she later explained, some carefully calculated strategy.

She was simply enjoying herself.

Mangold Thought He Had Found Laura Almost Immediately

The homemade approach worked.

Mangold’s reaction to Keen’s early footage was remarkably strong. He later said he felt, even before meeting her, that she was the person he had been searching for.

Others were impressed too.

Patrick Stewart recalled being shown Keen’s audition footage and being particularly struck when she began improvising, shifting between Spanish and English. The official audition material eventually released by 20th Century Fox showed why the young actress had made such an impression: she could move from silence to explosive confrontation without seeming intimidated by the far more experienced Jackman.

But being a favorite on tape did not mean the role was automatically hers.

Keen still had to face the far more intimidating stage of auditioning in person.

Then the Audition Suddenly Went Wrong

By the final stage, Keen was auditioning opposite Jackman with another actress still being considered for Laura.

That changed her confidence.

At Calgary Expo in 2025, Keen recalled seeing the other performer and becoming intensely nervous. The confidence visible in her homemade tapes disappeared, and Keen left the room believing she had performed badly.

Most actors would have been forced to live with the mistake.

Keen decided she would not.

As she was leaving, she told her mother that she needed another attempt. Her mother relayed the request, meaning the production — and Hugh Jackman himself — would have to wait while an 11-year-old candidate asked for a do-over.

Looking back as an adult, Keen found her younger self’s nerve almost difficult to understand. She joked that the confidence belonged specifically to being 11; she would find the same move much more frightening now.

And once she was allowed back inside, she did not merely repeat the audition.

She took control of it.

She Corrected the Spanish — Then Asked to Improvise

Keen returned with an observation about the material: some of the Spanish dialogue was wrong.

As a bilingual actress raised between British and Spanish influences, she corrected it.

Then she asked Mangold a simple question: “Can I improvise?”

He agreed.

The freedom appeared to restore what had made her original tapes so compelling.

Mangold has separately recalled the physical intensity of Keen’s screen test with Jackman. One scene required Laura and Logan to become furious with each other, and the director kept encouraging Keen to push harder. Jackman reportedly finished the session with a significant bruise on his shoulder.

The chemistry the filmmakers needed was there.

Keen got the role.

Laura Became Much More Than Wolverine’s Sidekick

When Logan arrived in theaters in March 2017, Laura became central to its emotional power.

The film presents an aging, exhausted Wolverine whose life changes when he is forced to protect a mysterious child with abilities disturbingly similar to his own. Keen had relatively little dialogue during large portions of the story, requiring her to communicate through movement, expressions and bursts of physical aggression.

The gamble worked.

Logan became both a critical and commercial success, ultimately earning about $619 million worldwide. The film also received an Academy Award nomination for adapted screenplay, a rare achievement for a superhero movie at the time.

For Keen, the role opened a much larger career.

In 2018, she was announced as Lyra, the central young heroine of the BBC and HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. She carried the fantasy drama through its three-season run alongside performers including Ruth Wilson, James McAvoy and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

She later entered another enormous franchise as Jedi Padawan Jecki Lon in the 2024 Star Wars series The Acolyte.

But perhaps the clearest sign of Laura’s lasting importance came seven years after Logan.

Keen put the claws on again.

Seven Years Later, She Returned to the Role That Started It All

In 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine, Keen reunited with Jackman and reprised Laura in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

By then, the child who had nervously requested one more audition had become an experienced performer returning to the character that introduced her to movie audiences.

Keen has spoken warmly about playing Laura again, saying she would happily continue with the character for years. She also described working with Jackman again as strangely seamless, almost as though no time had passed between the two productions.

That reunion gives her original audition story an unusual symmetry.

The most important moment may not have been the extraordinary first tape that caught Mangold’s eye, or even the improvisation that impressed veteran actors.

It may have been the moment after Keen thought she had failed.

At 11, she could have walked away believing her opportunity was gone.

Instead, she turned around and asked for one more chance.

This time, she made it count.