His big break nearly passed him by for lack of $1,500.

Jason Mitchell was a struggling New Orleans actor with almost no experience when he submitted an audition tape to play rapper Eazy-E in “Straight Outta Compton,” a biopic about the influential 1980s gangsta rap group N.W.A., opening Friday.

The actor studied video footage of Eazy (né Eric Wright) and listened to his music until he could mimic the late rapper’s speech and mannerisms. Director F. Gary Gray liked what he saw, and asked Mitchell to Los Angeles for a callback audition.

“It would have cost me $1,500 to fly out for one day, so I said, ‘Uh, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to make it,’ ” Mitchell, 28, tells The Post.

Luckily, Gray settled for a Skype meeting. Now, as former N.W.A. member Dr. Dre recently warned Mitchell: “S – - t is about to get crazy.”

It’s definitely about to get better for Mitchell. He only started acting in 2010. “To be honest, acting was something where I got a chance to be somebody else and forget about the situation I was in,” he says. “I got caught up in the drug scene like a lot of my friends. We were making mistakes.”

He took a few acting classes and landed an agent after just five weeks, scoring bit parts in 2012’s “Contraband” and 2013’s “Broken City” — both starring Mark Wahlberg, who put in a good word for Mitchell with the studio.

Playing Eazy-E marks the young actor’s biggest challenge yet, and the rapper’s rise and fall — from south Los Angeles drug dealer to rap superstar to dying from AIDS in 1995 — provides the emotional story arc in “Straight Outta Compton.”

The production re-created several concert and studio scenes in which the actors were required to actually perform parts of N.W.A. songs. To nail Eazy’s cadence, Mitchell worked with rapper William “WC” Calhoun.

“He told me that Eazy and those guys from the older generation had a different posture, a different walk,” Mitchell says.

He stayed in character for six weeks prior to filming. Looking the part required three hours of makeup each day -— including a wig that mimicked Eazy’s Jheri-curl ’do.

It all paid off when Eazy’s pals saw him. Says Mitchell: “Dr. Dre was literally jumping out of his seat.”