Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Casting directors are like these fairy godmother witches.
Casting directors tend to be the unsung heroes in this business.
Casting directors now just see me as the hard-core sniper or prison guard.
I used to love auditioning. I loved going into the room and meeting casting directors.
Casting directors will often say that they are open to any ethnicity, but they're not.
I can't change what casting directors do or what producers do. I can only change what I do.
Generally, nowadays, I'm using my own accent because casting directors want it; they like that.
There are casting directors with lots of imagination, but also some with not as much imagination.
In some cases, the casting directors have casted blindly and have not looked into my ethnic background.
I've been at this a long time, but commercials are what hit for me. Casting directors watch those commercials.
I think the more open-minded people we have - like casting directors and producers - the better things are going to be.
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.
Casting directors don't necessarily want a more recognizable commercial face. Sometimes, they want a lesser known person.
I was rejected by casting directors during the day. I attended class in the evening, then rode 90 miles on the train home.
Maybe I'm too masculine. Casting directors cast in their own, or an idealized image. Maybe I don't look like anybody's ideal.
You have to remind casting directors out here that you don't just do one thing. There's a lot of people who do just one thing.
No, I don't think it is required for casting directors to be actors too. My mentor Gautam Kishanchandani cannot act to save his life!
I'm being called in by all the great casting directors. It's no longer based on a headshot. I realize now what they're buying is passion.
My big break was becoming the spokesperson for Texas Instruments. Casting directors really started giving me a chance to read for projects.
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.
There's no set formula of success in Bollywood and one needs to be constantly in touch with the casting directors to get hold of the right opportunities.
Personally, I've always had to face casting directors or producers saying, 'You're right for the part, but nahh, you're not quite what we're looking for.'
When I came out here, my manager thought that casting directors might think I'm a girl, and when I did Threat Matrix, they thought Jamie was a little light.
I can remember getting rejected systematically by casting directors as a young kid. I felt like the biggest outsider there ever was; that I'd never belong in that club.
When I started out modeling, there weren't casting directors and there weren't stylists, so you just dealt directly with the designer. We were all much closer back then.
Casting directors said that I look like an urban girl with sharp features. Maybe that is true, but we are living at a time where a lot of advanced make-up techniques are available.
Even when they have a star that they're going after, casting directors love, if anything, just the excuse to see people. They like to have a dugout full of actors that they can go to.
If you work in casting, it's sort of not cool to want to act. A lot of people think that casting directors are frustrated actors, but it wasn't true with any of the casting people I knew.
Over 20 years, I chipped away at a career little by little. I worked churches, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway. I began being recognized by my peers by casting directors, actors, producers.
Casting director was a part-time thing, which later became a full-time job because there was a lack of casting directors in our industry and people were looking for professionals to do it.
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.
I had a role in 'Crossroads' when I was about 21, and then I went on to perform in 'Small Change' and then 'Piaf' in the Donmar Warehouse, London, and it was when I was there that some casting directors spotted me.
Then there is Abhimanyu Ray, Honey Trehan, Nandini Srikanth, Shanoo Sharma, we have so many great casting directors who have nothing to do with acting. You just need to have a great eye to understand the character.
Acting in itself is changing. This change is because of the advent of the casting director. Earlier, there would be stock characters, who would be seen in every film. Now, casting directors are bringing fresh faces.
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.
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.
Even though I'm very fortunate and grateful to have played Aladdin, there were still four, five casting directors who never gave me a shot in Toronto. They didn't give me the time of day. I never got to audition for them.
Casting directors I don't think are the best in Mexico at street casting. Whereas, I think, in New York and in L.A., that's more common; not so in Mexico. So it's up to you as a director in a lot of ways to go out and do that.
I've always thought that as long as directors and casting directors don't see me as just Harry Potter, I'll be OK. People have shown a lot of faith in me, and I owe them a huge debt. They're letting me prove that I'm serious about this.
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.
The greatest thing about having done 'Orange' are the doors that have opened for me, and people have been able to see me, like the executives and the casting directors - also, all of the fantastic directors and writers for independent films.
I am half Puerto Rican, a quarter German and a quarter black. That was always a big issue for me - being mixed race - because casting directors tended to be very like, 'OK, are you Hispanic for this role?' 'Or is she going to be African American?'
A lot of times in Hollywood, when casting directors find out you're of Middle Eastern descent, they go, 'Oh, you're Iranian? Great. Can you say, 'I will kill you in the name of Allah?'' I could say that, but what if I were to say, 'Hello, I'm your doctor.'
After 'Homeland,' I was offered a lot of very authoritarian, square, angry boss types, but I wanted to do something different. Casting directors are surprised when they look at my CV and see all the work I've done, from Shakespeare to playing Nelson Mandela.
My first audition was for Terrence Malick's 'The Tree of Life.' These casting directors came through Texas, and they recruited somewhere around 10,000 kids to come and audition for this movie. They sent me a letter in the mail, and I went and auditioned for this movie.
Such a big part of this business is rejection. Each time that you get rejected, a big part of it is just staying positive - even if you don't get the role, it's still giving you practice. I love being able to take direction and talk with the casting directors in the room.
You see these casting directors' lists of characters, and they're all boxed in. Twenties is the hot girlfriend, thirties you can still be hot but moving swiftly to hot mum. Forties, you're the legal person in a pantsuit. Then, once you reach your fifties, you're positively elderly.
When a show becomes successful, people want to hire the people on the show for other things, and we would all try to do other things, but we could never end up doing them, so casting directors were just like, 'Enough of them! Don't touch the 'Glee' kids, because you can't use them!'
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.
I would love to do a talk show. Naturally, I would love to do more films. I'd love to be able to see casting directors more willing to put in a character who happens to be deaf. I'm not talking about doing deaf storylines, but putting in deaf characters. I'd love to be able to do Broadway.