I’m lucky because I had blonde hair for a while for this TV show I was doing – they had me dye my hair blonde – and every audition I was going out for was bleach blonde. The mean girl, the pretty girlfriend, and the dumb cheerleader.
I think there are a lot of actors who are excellent at cold reads, and they go to an audition, and they read the part and nail it, but then when it comes to the performance, they don’t have something.
When I am driving to an audition, I listen to the ‘Hamilton: The Musical’ soundtrack. It’s super inspiring, but also, if I kind of sing-slash-rap along to it, it helps me with my pronunciation and dialect.
I want to seem completely bare. Especially when I’m reading for a role. I want to reveal myself in the audition room. That’s where I’m happiest.
I’ve learnt that there’s acting for film, acting for theatre, and acting for an audition.
I vividly remember my first interaction with Sir Richard Attenborough, I was in my final year at NSD (National School of Drama) in 1979, and casting director Dolly Thakore got in touch with me. We weren’t supposed to work outside NSD but special permission was granted to the students who were shortlisted for the audition.
I was thrown in the deep end at 18 when I got cast in a movie that I didn’t audition for. The director just sort of found me and put me in a film, so the decision was really made for me.
I ran away from my house when I was about 12 years old to audition for a film.
I usually don’t get the movies I audition for.
It was pretty surreal to be auditioning as a kid, and I’d get close to these actors that I really respected. I remember River Phoenix in particular. I met him at an audition hall or something.
I wasn’t a dancer learning to play Baby Houseman. I was Baby Houseman learning to play a dancer. I was someone who’d never done any Latin dance. I’d taken jazz classes and ballet growing up in New York, so I had dance in me, and I knew I loved it, but I’d never done a dance audition.
I’ve always found that I have to audition, but that’s a process that I kind of enjoy. I enjoy the challenge, and ‘We’re The Millers’ was the same. It was a long audition process that I had to go through, but I enjoyed the challenge of that.
I went to an audition for a Harry Belafonte Roaring Twenties special for choreographer Donald McKayle, but I failed.
Certainly, when I walk into an audition, a lot of people already know who I am.
Audition is the worst thing. It’s like cleaning furniture in a department store.
I was about 15 years old, and I needed a job, and somebody I know – I don’t even know who it was – said that there was a television show that needed a presenter and that I should go and audition for it, so I did. That was a show called ‘The Word,’ and I got that job.
When I was in high school, they opened an arts high school. I didn’t read music, and I wasn’t a trained dancer, so I was like, ‘OK, I guess I’ll go into acting.’ I asked my mom if she knew any plays for my audition, and the only one she knew was ‘A Raisin in the Sun.’
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 had this one audition – I won’t say the casting director’s name, but she was on the phone the whole time I sang. I was literally doing my audition, and she was on the phone. So I guess whatever it is she was ordering for lunch was more important than the high C’s I was belting out.
When I wanted to audition for a dinner-theater junior troupe in my hometown, I needed to have a piece of musical theater music to sing. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to use. My mom and dad suggested that I sing ‘Edelweiss’ because I knew it from the music box.
When I was 16 years old, I joined a drama group called North Queensland Academy of Dramatic Art under a woman called Maggie Shephard-King. She inspired me to audition for the role of Romeo in ‘Romeo and Juliet.’
When I auditioned for ‘Pitch Perfect,’ I didn’t know it was a singing movie. I didn’t read the script. I go to the audition, and I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s a baseball movie.’ But then I’m reading the lines, and I’m like, ‘This doesn’t seem like a baseball movie.’
I read a script that’s presented to me, and if I love the story and the role, I audition for the part, which is pretty much how I approach it.
One of the things I learned in college is that if you’re going to be late for an audition, don’t go.
I was on vacation with my family when I got the scripts for ‘Wanderlust’ and I was trying to work on the audition while I was on vacation. I remember a big gust of wind blew the entire script into the pool, so I had to dry it with a hairdryer.
I saw ‘Starbuck’ before I ever knew I would be involved in ‘Delivery Man,’ but I liked it, and then a couple of months went by, and I really knew I wanted to audition for it when it became available.
I was filming ‘Father Brown’ when my agent told me about the audition. As soon as I heard the words ‘Line of Duty,’ I was so excited.
My last audition for ‘Baby Driver,’ I had to meet with Jon Hamm and go through the scenes. I was a bit nervous: ‘What if Jon Hamm dislikes me? This is the end.’ I also watched ‘Mad Men’ religiously, so that didn’t help with my nerves.
I don’t find imitating other people’s music easy at all. I remember being fifth in line for a Rolling Stones tour, early ’90s, when Bill Wyman left, and I was hoping against hope that I wouldn’t get the call to audition. I wouldn’t be able to play a Stones song if you put a gun to my head.
I’ve actually been given a great gift. When I walk into an audition with a director, I’m carrying no baggage. They haven’t seen me in anything, even though I’ve done nine films.
I studied acting for 10 years before I went for an audition. I studied with Lee Strasberg and Actors Studio teachers, and went to the High School of Performing Arts.
I had sent out 100 audition tapes within 365 days, and then I got the ‘Dope’ audition. When I sent that out, two days later my manager called me and said they wanted to fly me out to L.A. to audition.
If you go in and audition for roles rather than just be offered them, then you kind of get a chance to kind of discover that you can do something that you didn’t think you could do.
The first audition my manger sent me on was ‘The Hunger Games,’ and I got the role.
I was asked if I’d audition for a part in a Broadway musical because the director just loved me.
I have disregarded gender when deciding which part to audition for.
I got the regular call, that they were doing a Broadway musical of Hairspray, and would I come and audition. I was familiar with the movie, because at the time it came out my lover wrote for Premiere magazine, and we had to see everything.
I went into the audition room with the mindset that ‘Little Fires’ was going to be my last audition. I put my all into it, but I didn’t get my hopes up.
I did audition a lot. One’s agent is keen to get you into film and TV because there’s more money. I was always getting myself into commitments to theatre companies.
I also think if you’re an actor and you can improvise, when you go on an audition and you can improvise you’re just a genius. If you can, you know, take a Tide commercial and you can just say one funny line that’s not in the commercial they think you’re a genius.
My worst audition was for Tim Burton for ‘Batman.’
I didn’t expect to get it at all. I just went along to the audition for the experience.
I’m persistent. In the early ’60s, when I first started making the rounds in New York for theater work, I became more and more enraged every time I had an interview or audition that went nowhere, and became more determined. I haven’t lost that.
My general audition song is almost always ‘Man That Got Away.’
I was playing a relatively high level of hockey, and I thought that’s what I wanted to do. But I had my first movie audition, and I was hooked.
My entire family, we were obsessed with ‘Glee,’ so when I got an audition, I was freaking out. But I knew exactly what to do, I had watched the show so many times.
I got my SAG card quite unexpectedly. I was here in Los Angeles doing a play called ‘Vanities’ – it was 1976, I believe – and I got invited by Dustin Hoffman, whom I’d met in New York, to come audition for a movie he was directing.
‘Red Robin’ was just another audition, like a lot of other auditions. I just lucked out, and I got it. It’s a great group of people I get to work with. Roger Craig Smith and Will Friedle and a bunch of guys. It’s fun!
I’ve done a movie called ‘Lemonade Mouth’ for Disney Channel, which was fun to do. I actually got discovered through an open casting call where anyone could audition.
I told my agents that I didn’t want to go on the audition. But as that was happening I called my mom, who has been watching the show from the beginning, and my mom said, ‘It’s the coolest show. You have to go.’
Louis Walsh, he made me audition for Girls Aloud, he said, ‘If you don’t, I won’t speak to you again.’ I was like, ‘We don’t speak that much anyway.’ I went and it all worked out well, I wouldn’t have gone to the audition if it wasn’t for him.
I still audition a lot and work really hard to get work. So I don’t really walk around feeling like I’ve made it. My short term goals are really just to be creatively stimulated and to be excited about material I might be working on.
