How do we encourage a lot more girls to pursue science, technology, and engineering careers? By casting droves of women in STEM jobs today in movies and on TV.
In the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, noted actors like Iftekhar used to get mainly police officer roles, Bindu ji would do a negative role, and Nirupama Roy was the on-screen mother. All this had its own charm. There was a fixed casting.
I would like to see more of the making of just regular television shows. Like the casting process. I think it’s so fascinating to watch the actors come in and see how they discuss everybody afterwards. It’s a crazy world that has no rhyme or reason.
I used to do a Saturday drama group called Young Blood Theatre Company with school-friends in west London – nothing to do with my mum and dad. A casting director came to pick people out for a new BBC children’s series called ‘MI High.’ She picked me, I auditioned, and I got the job.
I was at stage school in Birmingham Rep when I was called down to London for an audition in the National Theatre. Maximilian Schell, the film actor, was casting Tales from the Vienna Woods. He was looking at me for a small, but significant, role.
I’m not going to change the world overnight. It’s one person at a time, and hopefully they’re people in positions of power who can help people get in those roles and really, truly embrace colorblind casting.
My plan was to model and pay the rent and then intern with designers and work on the other side of the industry however I could, but then it just got to be too much, especially with casting, fashion week, and also working for a fashion designer.
My strangest auditioning experience was when I was reading for a TV show, and right when I started the audition, the casting director left the room and yelled at me from the hallway to keep reading.
I think it is really important that people at least have some potentially difficult discussions about what their expectations are – and not just financially – prior to getting married. It should really even happen prior to people living together or casting their lot together.
European authors often write books about the rest of the world that profess a vision of shared humanity but fall far short, casting the other as exotic or dangerous.
I had great luck with Tim McGraw twice in ‘Friday Night Lights’ and ‘The Kingdom.’ I love finding off-beat casting and finding someone you know in one way and you reinvent them in another way. I like doing that as a director.
Gastronomy is my hobby. I’m simply the casting director. Once I’ve brought all the right people together, it is they who must work together to tell a story.
I think one of the biggest jobs of being a director is getting the casting right.
The casting process for ‘Hate Mail’ just got so difficult. Once you lock in one person and then you try to find the next person, you lose the first person and then the financing falls away.
Radio is the art form of sports casting. If you’re any good, you can do a great job on radio.
I got space from Travis Air Force Base, went back to the Philippine Islands and made it a point to meet the only American casting director in the Philippines. I was off and running.
I’ve done auditions where the casting director is taking the paper out of my hand in the middle of reading.
My job is to kind of nudge them. Who said it, where, like, ‘90% of the job is casting,’ so all I do is try to come to set and focus on getting all the best shots to cover the story; that’s really it.
I’ve been in charge all my damn life, but executive producing is teamwork. You’re involved with every aspect of the production, from casting to locations, everything.
It’s not just about casting female protagonists. It’s gotta be across the board throughout the industry.
My first in, my first break, was I met a director and got to talking with her, and she happened to be casting this movie that she had written. That was ten years ago. That got me to Hollywood. I got paid $700 bucks.
Auditioning is such an unnatural thing. You’re in a tiny little room with, like, seven people cramped together, acting to a casting director; just, none of it makes any sense.
The casting process starts off really scary, especially when you’re trying to find a Harriet Tubman.
We’re being critiqued every day, whether you hear them critiquing you, or it’s behind your back, whether it’s the client, casting, friends, agents – you’re constantly being judged, and you’re constantly being denied!
For me, talking about the casting couch in the Malayalam film industry was like calling the sky blue. There is nothing new about calling a spade a spade. My intention was not to create an effect; I just wanted to pluck a few weeds in the system and throw them out.
Somehow, casting directors tell me that I don’t have that innocent face to play a lead on TV. I only get negative roles to play.
I also get fed up with the fact that casting agents and directors have this impression of me as being frail and petite. I find it very patronizing. I’m quite beefy and strong. I was a gymnast in school and I have lots of muscles.
All I can say is that with ‘The Golden Compass,’ I didn’t get to make the movie I had planned to make. When I look at the film, at the casting and certain scenes, I’m very happy. As for the final product, I can’t vouch for that.
I didn’t want to have people open doors for me. My dad never made a call on my behalf to anyone – not to a producer, a director, or a casting agent.
People are always casting me for what they call my ‘authority.’
As an actor, you see a sliver of how the show is made, but to see the actual writing process and the re-writing process and the casting process and art direction and set design – all of this is happening in a very intense period.
In theater, you can be free. That’s how Lin-Manuel Miranda got to do the most revolutionary piece of theater with ‘Hamilton’: color-blind casting in roles in which they would never cast Latinos if it were a film or TV show. It just goes to show that Hollywood and cable are way behind.
When I started, I knew nothing about fashion. I remember, my first day going to my agency, I was wearing these huge bell-bottoms – they were patchwork corduroy and denim, which, at the time, I thought were amazing. My agent told me, ‘You have a casting with Prada – you have to burn those jeans.’
If you’re a casting director, you’re going to be curious to see what Timothy Spall’s son is like. But when you get in the door, you have to have something to offer.
The public saw my father right out of central casting. He looked the part, acted the part… he was the part! The real life Godfather.
When you first get out of doing a show for a long time where you played a teenager, casting directors and producers all still look at you as being the character that you played for so long.
My secret to all casting, and specifically kids, is cast good human beings.
As actors, when you can’t be in the room with the casting director or the producers, you put yourself on tape and send it off.
I usually prefer casting actors from our own industry.
Good directing is good writing and good casting.
People look upon a person in TV as someone they can see for nothing. This is carried over in casting pictures. They’re afraid; they will not cast a TV lead to be a lead in a movie.
I do more of ensemble casting, roles that are different. In one film I’m playing a villain, in the other I’m playing a son.
The casting directors that were aware of ‘The Real World’ looked at me as a joke. It was so hard to get away from that.
Where having been an actor was extremely helpful to me was in casting. That’s where I think a director who has acted can really shine, and casting is the most important thing you do.
Real change begins with citizens registering to vote, becoming active and engaged in their communities, and casting their ballot at every election for those who will fairly and accurately represent them.
I’ve done over 100 auditions, but I was lucky to stumble onto the Internet as it was growing. Because in film, people are not looking at casting completely unknown faces as lead roles.
When you do casting in Hollywood, it’s always the same question: ‘Who is available?’
It’s a weird thing, my shows. I don’t know how to describe it, but I feel because I go about the casting process so slowly that it does feel like an instant family.
A movie will live or die with your casting.
In the early days, Jerry was an antagonist, which was arguably his best casting. ‘The King’s’ quick wit is perfectly suited to be an antagonist, but at the same time, he’s so funny that it is hard to hate Jerry Lawler as the villain – especially at this stage of his long career.
I always used to say, as a director, that I could make anybody good in a movie if you found the right part. It all comes down to casting.
There aren’t as many roles for people who look like me, and it was always complicated when it came to casting my parents. But now I couldn’t be more grateful that I have a different look.
I often go to lunch meetings with my agent, a gallerist or a casting director, but if not, I stay at home and prepare my own food because I love to cook. I’m great at pasta, fish and nice salads.
When I’m sitting in a casting room in Paris, I’m not the thinnest model. Sometimes I’m not the most flat-chested, either.
