Vince Vaughn had to prove he was funny enough to land role in Old School

Vince Vaughn had to prove to studio bosses that he was funny enough to star in Old School.

The actor played Bernard 'Beanie' Campbell in the Todd Phillips-directed comedy back in 2003, alongside fellow funnymen Luke Wilson and Will Ferrell.

However, he revealed in a recent interview with GQ magazine that execs at DreamWorks Pictures, the studio behind the cult classic, weren't convinced Vince was the right actor to play the character, as he'd previously starred in independent movies such as Swingers.

"Todd’s a terrific writer and great with comedy. The part that was really interesting was the studio didn’t know if I could do comedy. ‘Cause at that point having done Swingers and Lost World I just sort of instinctually gravitated to more kind of character-based stuff," he explained, noting that he and director Todd had to work hard to prove that Vince was the perfect choice to play Bernard.

"I had been doing much more smaller indies. But I hadn’t done a lot of mainstream comedy. I think he maybe had to show them an interview I did on a talk show or something to make them comfortable that I could do the comedy," Vince recalled. "That was interesting for me because I had come from comedy."

Old School, which also starred Jeremy Piven, Ellen Pompeo, Juliette Lewis, Leah Remini, Seann William Scott, and Elisha Cuthbert, was released in 2003 and raked in more than $87 million ($66 million) worldwide.