I was dating someone and wanted to get married to him. But just because casting couch exists in TFI and I work here, he didn’t respect me.
I did the plays in middle school. I was cast as a gate in my fourth grade play, and every year I got a bigger role. Then, in 7th grade, I played Smike in ‘Nicholas Nickleby,’ and the casting director saw me and asked me to audition for a movie. That movie led to me getting ‘Moonrise Kingdom.’
Casting directors tend to be the unsung heroes in this business.
It’s an interesting thing when you’re casting a film – especially when you’re trying to discover someone – you’re waiting for someone to step into the room in an audition process and claim the role.
I think it would be a problem if Hollywood was casting British actors only as villains; if that were the case, then certainly there would be cause for concern.
When ‘The Pacific’ came around, I had to audition the old-fashioned way. It was the casting director and then the producer and then another producer and another producer and then Spielberg and Hanks.
I’m trying to be global and trying to push us, as a society, to becoming colorblind, and so I’m very grateful to ABC for casting me in ‘Quantico.’ It was based on my merit, not on my ethnicity.
The first director I ever worked with on ‘Thrones,’ he had a big hand in casting me. He said he cast me because there was a bit of an Alec Guinness about me, but a very dangerous Alec Guinness.
I really like iconoclastic casting. I really do.
In some cases, the casting directors have casted blindly and have not looked into my ethnic background.
I always take kind of a zen view of casting and I really don’t remember people who passed. I kind of turn it over to the universe and figure, ‘Wow, I guess that wasn’t meant to be.’ It doesn’t sit with me.
A New York casting director, who shall remain nameless, once said to me, ‘Marcia, you have what I call the flaring-nostril look, and until you get something done about it, you will never, ever work.’
L.A. can be pretty insane because there’s so much show business here, but I also know a lot of kids who grew up in Manhattan who are some of the most normal, nicest people I know. Casting directors always say Chicago people are just nicer.
I think the way it works is that when you’re casting a movie, you usually want to work with people that you believe in.
When I write, I imagine scenes. I write things down. I take photographs. I do some casting. I rewrite. It’s a permanent making or remaking.
What’s funny about that is when I was writing Twilight just for myself and not thinking of it as a book, I was not thinking about publishing, and yet at the same time I was casting it in my head. Because when I read books, I see them very visually.
I am always curious to sit down with the actor who’s playing the part after the casting process and get to know them, get to understand their life a little bit more.
Because of my Marxism, I was not into myths or miracles, whether it was the virgin birth, the physical resurrection or casting out demons from an epileptic.
Casting ethnic characters is a very hard thing to do, but it’s important. It’s also interesting.
I had been doing summer stock every summer while I was in college. We did a showcase, like most good conservatories do – monologues and things that agents and casting directors come to see. From that I got an agent.
Chemistry exists or it doesn’t, and I think casting is a very underappreciated component of filmmaking.
To David Lynch, any film or television show should be life casting a shadow.
I was being flirted with for ‘Modern Family,’ which my wife still hasn’t let me live down, but it’s one of those things where that show is so brilliant because the casting couldn’t be any more perfect. It wouldn’t have been right for me, and I wouldn’t have been right for it.
I believe in the power that a casting director has.
It’s not enough to be diverse in your casting. You have to service those characters; you have to make them fully well rounded because people are watching.
We try to stay as open-minded about casting as possible. When you’re getting things down on paper, you might even avoid writing down a name, let alone if they have blonde hair or this or that, to stop.
As an actor, you do feel very powerless… you are at the whim of the agent who submits you for a project, and then at the audition, you are at the whim of the casting director who will cast you or not.
It’s weird how the Internet changes everything. The kind of narrow casting… instead of reaching for a broad audience, you are reaching for a more targeted audience.
A lot of people thought of casting me in various things while I was still inside the ‘Bigg Boss’ house. When I came out, people were actually waiting for me so they could offer me new projects.
I had moved across the country, taken internships, networked, worked long hours, and called in favors to get there. And I had done it. I was working in Hollywood. So imagine the melancholy I found myself in when I realized that I didn’t love casting the way that I always thought I would.
After ‘Entourage,’ it completely opened up my casting within the industry. People saw me for a lot of roles that I hadn’t been seen for before. Older roles. I went out this pilot season for a lot of lawyers and doctors. And cops – which I haven’t quite mastered yet; I find that quite difficult.
As I’ve always said, preproduction is so important. When you cast the actors, you’ve done much of the work. Now, you may need to guide them a little, take it up or down, have them go faster or slower, but the casting process is crucial.
Casting is everything. I put a huge amount of work into casting, and consistently across my career, I am most proud of my bold choices I made in casting.
As an actor, I have casting issues. I’m a minority. I don’t have trouble making a living, but as far as being on the food chain of the pecking order of actors, I’m not at the top of it. With the jobs that I do, there are always control issues with directors and producers.
I always look at auditions as not even getting the job as much as I’m just trying to connect with this casting director so they remember me for next time.
I had a very hard time accepting myself as a character actress because I wanted to be glamorous and a leading lady like everybody else. I looked in the mirror and thought I looked pretty good, but casting didn’t ever see me that way.
America seems much more diverse and has more exciting casting – they really take risks.
If there is anybody who can give you a combination of quality and reasonable budget, innovative content and casting, it is me!
I was doing specialisation in advertising. I had no interest in acting. One of my friends, who was doing specialisation in films, made a short film casting me. Luckily, I got a break, and my acting career took off.
Casting is really exciting. With ‘Twilight,’ I wasn’t involved at all with the casting in the original. They kept me in the loop, which was great. They’d be like, ‘Hey Kristen Stewart’s gonna do it’ and I was like, ‘Really? Awesome.’
The editors and the creators of ‘The Bachelor’ and ‘The Bachelorette,’ they are so good at casting and at finding these young, beautiful lunatics to go on the show.
Sometimes it’s all about the casting.
I am an actor. Let me act, let me audition. Let me show what I can do. You need to surprise yourself every time and that will surprise the audience or casting person.
It’s really weird casting babies; it’s kind of the dark underbelly of Hollywood, to meet babies and judge them.
Acting and singing on ‘One Tree Hill’ was definitely one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I didn’t even know I could act until I auditioned at the casting call for the part of Mia.
I’m not in a position where I get to pick and choose roles. I usually go on auditions in long lines and embarrass myself in front of casting directors, and with a lump in my throat and my ears burning, I walk past reception and smirking actors as I go to the parking garage and go back on the highway.
I’ve been really lucky when it comes to casting kids, and I don’t particularly like child actors. Too often, they just show up, and they’ve had whatever real innocence that’s in a child just beaten out of them. They start to perform for you, and you can just see it coming. It’s no good.
How will I become Meryl Streep if I can’t even get in the door with Jennifer Lawrence for the same role? I think that it starts with casting directors and executives and studio heads opening up their minds, and really putting an effort into being trans inclusive in their projects, whether they’re trans-specific or not.
I love casting against type and doing things you wouldn’t expect, because I think you get more interesting performances that way. Hollywood loves to pigeonhole people, and there’s nothing an actor loves more than to do something different.
If you’re an evil company who’s casting minorities to be in your commercial to get the politically correct card, it’s like putting a band-aid over a bigger problem. But I think it’s an incredible start.
I can see my ghost trying to get that Academy Award, forever stuck in a casting office. Can you imagine? I’ve spent enough time in audition rooms. I don’t want to be doing that in my afterlife.
