I fell into acting by going to a callback for J.C. Penney with my two older brothers when I was 4 1/2 years old. The casting director saw me and asked to bring me in the room with them. The three of us ended up booking the commercial!
I work with big directors. I work with good actors. I act in female-centric films. And I do all this without ever indulging in a casting couch experience. Because I believe in hard work, talent, and blessing.
An accent like mine and a face like mine, I think a lot of the time it’s easy for casting directors to just stick me in as a bad boy, but ‘Being Human’ took a risk on me – bless ’em – and I’m not that bad boy no more.
George Lucas was casting about and had heard favourable things about my work in Clockwork Orange and asked me to come in, which of course I did even though no one knew what the film was about!
To be given the reins of creativity is a beautiful thing when you’re used to just showing up to a casting and standing there having clothes put on you.
Foremost is the casting; you need convincing faces. Most of our films suffer from casting.
There is no casting director; there is no producer monitoring your upload button. Anyone that looks like anyone can upload a video. I think YouTube and the digital space does set a really good example for the rest of the industry in that sense.
My job is to tell a story, and the decisions about the casting have to be honest.
I’m not interested in going to casting after casting, trying to get into that game. So there is a part of me that knows that I will do more characters, even if I have to produce those projects myself to get those projects out there. If the right characters come along, I would love to. I would jump at the chance.
My dad’s an actor, and my mum’s a casting director and a writer.
Historically, we have seen cis men play trans women and vice versa. That casting breaks through the fourth wall, and it gives people the message that trans people are being played by cis men in real life, which is where we get this idea of men in dresses.
Genre categories are irrelevant. I dislike them, but I do not have the casting vote.
It was only after I’d had some injuries that I basically retired from the performing side of show business and then began working in casting. I did that for 19 years or so before a friend of mine decided to cast me as Phyllis Lapin-Vance on ‘The Office.’
I always think that a director who knows about the technical side, but cares about the acting performances and casting as well, is ahead of the game.
If you’re a young person who wants to become an actor, it’s really important to walk into a casting room with a sense of yourself and some life experience. You can really delight a room and have them already choose you before you’ve even said a word!
In the ’70s, with movies like ‘Little Big Man,’ westerns began to have a little different flavor, and I think casting people and filmmakers began to realize, ‘Hey, maybe we can get a little more authentic in terms of who we cast here.’ That kind of opened up the gates.
I think the thing that is most influential about ‘Haxan’ is the casting of the witches as just old women and the strength of that.
A lot of things that I can’t get into the room for, even just to be seen, is because they’re just saying ‘No. they’re not casting non-white.’ You’re lumped into a category with people who are just not white.
I worked at Warner Bros. for a while. I was the head of the minority talent casting. It was like pre-Spike Lee and post-blaxploitation era.
Casting couch is a demon of the world! It is just that in the industry just because people know them, it is just talked about much more but it should be completely eliminated as a concept.
I think feminism’s a bit misinterpreted. It was about casting off all gender roles. There’s nothing wrong with a man holding a door open for a girl. But we sort of threw away all the rules, so everybody’s confused. And dating becomes a sloppy, uncomfortable, unpleasant thing.
Writing is my main interest; it is where my heart is. I always want to continue writing. Apart from that, I enjoy casting and hopefully want to direct too.
I turned down a part in ‘Petticoat Junction.’ They wanted me to play a circus giant. I didn’t want to take that step into type casting. I don’t want to play freaks and science-fiction monsters.
I believe really deeply in the pilot process because you learn things about tone and casting. Even some of our best shows have had substantial re-shoots and reworking before they’ve gone on the air.
When I was in casting, we would bring somebody in, have them read their lines, maybe give them a few pointers, and hire them, and then once they go to the set and you have a director who’s directing them, that performance may not be anywhere near what you had in the audition, either good or bad.
In Ronald Reagan’s chaotic childhood, the imagination was armor. There is nothing unusual about that; transcending the doubts, hesitations, and fears swirling around you by casting yourself internally as the hero of your own adventure story is a characteristic psychic defense mechanism of the Boy Who Disappears.
Helping to open up the conversation about inclusion and diversity in casting has been a dream come true.
AMC has a track record for finding actors who have been working actors but not names yet and casting them.
I haven’t grown since I was 13, and every girl cast opposite me isn’t allowed to wear heels on camera, for fear that I would look minuscule. In all of the casting calls for my best friends on every project, it says in big, bold, red letters: ‘Please no high heels.’ It’s a little embarrassing.
My dad was one of the original members of the Groundlings, and I watched him as an actor have ups and downs, and I watched my mom as a casting director have ups and downs.
Villains are always the best roles, but that meant that for months afterwards, all I got offered were absolute cads and bounders and really nasty pieces of work, as well as a lot of people who only had one arm. Such is the limited imaginative power, you see, of a great many casting directors.
I was cast in ‘Thor’ and I’m cast as a Nordic god. If you know anything about the Nords, they don’t look like me but there you go. I think that’s a sign of the times for the future. I think we will see multi-level casting. I think we will see that, and I think that’s good.
Casting is everything. Getting the person that you imagined is this character and then seeing what they bring to it.
I was in the pilot of ER: I played a 15-year-old pregnant girl they were treating. And then, in the final season, they were casting for interns.
Many casting directors won’t hire aspiring actors because you might be burning some chick’s headshot under the table so she doesn’t get the part.
Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they’re casting, they’re dressing the scene, they’re working out where the energy of the scene is coming from and they’re also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.
I worked in casting for about five years before I became a director, and that taught me a huge amount because you never actually will see the character walk through the door – and if you do, then you have to be slightly suspicious of that.
And I met Paul Simms while I was making ‘It’s Pat’, and he later wound up casting me in ‘NewsRadio.’
When I came to Mumbai to act and it didn’t work out for me for few years, I thought I will go back to training but casting room has been a great training space for me.
‘Grace’ is basically a death prayer. Not something of sorrow, but of just casting away any fear of death. No relief will come – you really just have to stew in your life until it’s time to go. But sometimes, somebody else’s faith in you can do wonders.
I have always had a flair for acting; maybe that’s why I enjoyed casting so much.
I am really interested in the way we relate to time. In particular, the way readers and writers talk to each other. Casting your voice out into the future is very beautiful to me.
I don’t plan, because everything goes against my plans anyways. There’s absolutely no point in planning anything. I’m just enjoying the moment. I’m meeting with a whole lot of people – casting directors, directors, agents. I have things going on everywhere, but I have no solid plans.
Casting couch exists as far as smaller films are concerned… B and C grade types.
When I was thinking of casting this, I thought, What roles would Sellers be playing now?
There aren’t as many roles, and I think there’s a lack of openness in casting an Asian character in a leading role or unless they’re a stereotype. It’s been hard. I’ve been able to play some non-stereotypical roles, which is great, but I have a lot of Asian actor friends who are struggling.
I can’t change what casting directors do or what producers do. I can only change what I do.
Casting has to make sense. You don’t want to make a splash to make a splash.
In 2008, Obama rode to victory in good part by wearing the openness face, casting the Bush administration as intrusive, secretive hawks who had little regard for individual privacy or civil liberties.
I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many great directors. Different styles, as well, like Gus Van Sant. He just does the casting and the milieu and let’s you do your thing, quietly. Bertolucci, who can talk to you about your internal world in quite a creative way or just say, ‘Well, put your hand over here.’
