My family is extremely supportive of me. My mother has been accompanying me to the shoots, and my father used to drive me around for auditions.
I was doing auditions and meetings during the day and going to culinary school at night. And then ‘NCIS’ happened. So I dropped out of culinary school.
It’s weird what a last name will do. I changed it to ‘Milian,’ and next thing you know, I was working and getting auditions and stuff, and it was crazy.
I think people feel completely stunted without an agent, but there’s a lot of auditions to be had without one and a lot to be learned before you take an agent on.
When I go to auditions, I try to always make sure I go in prepared. I always think to myself, ‘I’m here to provide them with a service. They need me, and if they decide to hire me for this service, I’m going to give them the best they’ve ever paid for and if they don’t, they’re dumb.’ That’s on them.
Auditions are very strange – you’re there to win, to seek approval. They never get easier, but I did realise that you’re there voluntarily, after all.
I once saw JLo’s ‘Behind the Music’ special, and she said she may not get every role she auditions for but her goal is to make every single person a fan. That stuck with me, and I want to do that every time I see a client.
Instead of being on teams at school, I was preparing for auditions.
I don’t know how I ever built a career, really, because I have always been absolutely terrible at auditions.
I had given up on acting because I would go for auditions every day, but nothing would happen.
In England, theater auditions are gentler experiences. You sit down with the director and talk about the play.
Sometimes you’re not always on or at your best, especially during auditions. So if you go in and you don’t nail it, even if they’re like, ‘We don’t need to see you again,’ get a friend, get a video camera, and film you doing the stuff again.
I had been kind of quite porky and happy at boarding school and not self-conscious at all; then, suddenly, I found myself in auditions being examined, and it made me angry.
I treat auditions as if they are gold. I try to make every one count.
I go to auditions even now and people say, ‘Oh, she’s too pretty,’ or ‘She doesn’t look like a small-town girl or a girl in high school who would get bullied.’ But that’s the whole point of being an actress – you can look glamorous when you’re on the red carpet, and then bring it all down and be raw onscreen.
I did work hard at auditions, and three years at RADA isn’t like a walk in the park. And then it takes a lot of sacrifices, giving certain things up in order to audition, in order to do a play, whatever it may be.
In general, the auditions I go up for are very sparse, I guess because of my ethnicity. And the characters are very similar: shy, innocent and naive; the connotations that come from the way that I look.
It’s interesting – years ago, I had such bad stage fright during musical theater auditions that I just gave up. And now I’m on Broadway.
I’m feeling pretty fortunate. I’ve been having lots of lovely auditions and meetings, so I’m savoring the moment.
It used to be true that to succeed in the creative class, you had to move immediately to where the action was. It was how you made connections, how you got auditions, how you found an audience and funding and some attention for your craft. But not anymore.
I did auditions at a club called the Comedy Connection. They wanted nothing to do with me. But one night they were doing a night of all women comics, and they invited me to do that.
I thought, ‘Oh, acting is going to be great – I get to play different parts.’ And then these auditions started coming up for terrorist, terrorist, terrorist, and I’m going, ‘Whoa, what’s this about?’
It’s only in acting where I’ve heard in auditions, ‘Can you black it up a little bit? Can you make her a little bit more urban?’ And it’s just like, ‘What?’ I don’t even know the word for that.
There have been, like, three auditions in my life where I feel like I’m in a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit.
If you’re an English actor and turn up in America, they don’t have an opinion about where you sit. They have no idea what auditions to send you to, so they send you to everything.
I did a couple auditions, failed miserably, was about to give up, and booked ‘Transparent.’
I took ‘Grease’ to play my trump card, my voice, and get attention that would lead to auditions for serious work like ‘Angels in America.’ But I backed myself into a corner with ‘Grease,’ and it took me 17 years to get out.
Well I started studying to help me with these commercial auditions and I just loved it.
You do get used to the ups and downs, the rejection of auditions and not getting parts, and so when you do get a job, it feels really special, and you try to hold onto it for as long as you can.
I’m horrible at auditions anyway. Maybe that’s why I never got anything.
My first manager was this lady named Booh Schut. She actually worked with me on my auditions.
It was a mixed blessing to have famous parents. It was tough to go to auditions and be bad, since I couldn’t be anonymous.
I have had to give auditions for every film I had done until ‘Dedh Ishqiya.’
In my last year of drama school, I was Abigail in ‘The Crucible’ and Nina in ‘The Seagull,’ and I did some Shakespeare with the RSC. That’s what casting directors saw me in, and I got put up for a lot of period drama auditions. I always get told I suit the costumes. I don’t think I have a very modern-looking face.
I got to L.A., and they said I had to lose weight, let my hair grow and buy some dresses. I was nailing auditions with my readings, but they wouldn’t hire me because I wasn’t putting on the glam. It just didn’t occur to me.
When I was a model at 15, I was eating one red pepper a day, and if I had a big day of castings, I would survive off a bag of Haribo, which gave me the 500 calories a day that would keep me alive. I was congratulated daily on my appearance – the more vertebrae upon my back you could count, the better my auditions went.
I’d been auditioning for parts for years. I never got any better at it. I’m crap at auditions. I know there are people who can walk into those rooms and make those lines sing on the page and get the job immediately. I wasn’t one of them. I’m still not one of them.
I’ve been asked far too often, ‘Can you be blacker?’ I’ve gotten done with auditions and heard, ‘We’re not going to go black with this character.’
It’s just been a lot of hard work and lot of auditions. A lot of ups and downs, but a lot of ups, and I’m really happy for my downs, too. I’m really thankful.
It’s been constant grinding and trying to secure work that I care about, tireless auditions and meetings. I’ve been fortunate that a lot of cool doors have opened to me, chiefly meeting great people who were inspired by what I’ve done and what they feel I could bring to their projects.
With my dad coming from a theatre tradition, there was a lot of preparation before auditions. Not just in terms of saying the lines correctly but a process of entering into what it was all about.
I’ve been in many auditions thinking, ‘God, do I have to take my shirt off?’
I didn’t have big movie offers, or any big agents wanting to work with me. I had to go grassroots, start at the bottom and go on 150 auditions before someone finally gave me a shot.
To be an actor, it’s really tough to find your own voice because you’re always tied to other characters and going to auditions and trying to get a job, hoping they’ll pick you. And I think it’s just so important for an actor to have something else that’s creative, something that’s creative and you’re in charge of.
I never went to auditions or screen tests. I just got cast.
I missed a lot of school for auditions, but other than that I had a very normal childhood.
I like going to the matinee. I like taking my daughter there. It’s just my favorite place in the world. I go there after auditions. I lived in New York City, I would go to the theater right after because it clears your mind.
I’ve been working as an actress and sort of struggling along for ten years, so I’ve been on a million auditions for a million things I haven’t booked.
The more auditions you go on, the more you will learn not to take it personally.
On the day of the audition for ‘Sullivan and Son,’ I had three other auditions all around Los Angeles. It was so hectic. I remember changing in my car before I went in to read.
Auditions make me nervous; any time I have to perform, I get stage fright.
My mom always wanted me to be an actor. And I started going to theater and going on auditions young.
The hardest part was when I was in high school not having a job and always being broke. I had to get to auditions without a car. I either took the bus or walked.
I would travel by train and then would take an auto-rickshaw to travel for auditions and look tests.
I don’t watch much television. My old TV agent used to always get mad at me because he’d send me out on auditions and I’d be like, ‘What’s this show?’ and he’d be like, ‘It’s literally the top show on television.’ I wasn’t allowed to watch TV as a kid.
I was thinking, with the TV exposure I had with WWE – and it’s kind of hard to explain to people sometimes how many countless hours you are on television when you’ve been on the road with WWE – I was thinking that was going to open doors, get me auditions, and get me into a lot of high profile roles.
