Top 1200 Casting Directors Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

My casting in 'Halo' produced by Steven Spielberg, which I am doing, is just color-blind casting; Asians have been questioning why best roles should not come to them and I am so happy about this color-blind casting. I am going to be just what I am in that film.

I randomly went to a casting session in my hometown in North Carolina, and the casting director introduced me to my manager. I really lucked into it!

The casting-couch routine has been going on for ages, from top directors to the lowliest agents. I had to attend a meeting where four actresses filed complaints against the same person over his moral conduct. It's not a funny situation.

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.

I think one of the things when you're casting children is you're also casting their parents.

I'm interested in colour-blind hiring of directors, producers, and writers. Go to the source. Then we won't need to have conversations about colour-blind casting.

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.

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.

One of the great things about this cast is that we've been able to take actors of relatively the same age group that would never usually meet. You know, like bridging the comedy/drama world that for some reason casting directors never really want to bridge or you get into one community and that's kind of it.

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.

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.

In terms of directors, great actors make directors - Gary Oldman was great to work with, for me; Tim Roth, too. You work with Scorsese and Spielberg and they were wonderful directors, but for me, working with actor/directors is special.

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.

Allison Jones, a big casting director out there, was like, 'They're casting 'The Daily Show' right now - you should submit a tape.' I remember leaving school to go shoot an audition.

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.

There are two types of directors: the directors who take and directors who give.

There are always discussions about casting stars in lead roles in theater - especially when you're working with commercial producers - and it's not something I'm against, not at all. But any casting has to be right for the project.

In any of the big acting cities, there are breakdowns that the casting directors put together for the projects that they're working on and then they get sent out to the agents and stuff like that. It's difficult to find projects, sometimes, unless your agent or manager is submitting you for those specific projects.

People obsess about casting and representation, but really, all the real work is behind the camera. Casting an Asian American into a bad role where they're shoehorned into these stereotypes is worse than not having cast them at all.

I have a very simple philosophy when it comes to casting, and it really is casting the best person for the role.

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.

I was very headstrong about wanting to keep my name when I moved to Los Angeles. But casting directors would call my managers and say I was perfect for the part, but my name wasn't marketable - I was a young guy, and had the old man name of Gary. I kept losing jobs because of the name not being marketable, so I changed it to Garrett.

The assistants in France are not like they are in the States. Assistants are much more close to the film directors, and they used to have a kind of very artistic task. They used to do the casting, scouting, and so forth.

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.

So I'm here, and not being one for missed opportunities, I made a list of the casting directors in New York and mark off the ones I've already met over the years. The few remaining I asked my agent and manager, "See if you can set up some meetings while I'm here."

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.

Directors don't get to see other directors at work - they're the only one on the set. I've met directors who've asked me what another filmmaker is like. So, there's probably nobody better placed to make all the comparisons and to pick up stuff than an actor.

I like interesting casting, and casting people who you think might be slightly different in parts.

Foremost is the casting; you need convincing faces. Most of our films suffer from casting.

I got my big break in Bollywood with Anurag Kashyap's 'Raman Raghav 2.0' when I got a call from one of the casting directors to appear for an audition. At that point, I didn't think that I would make the cut since I was auditioning for a Bollywood film for the very first time. Within an hour of the audition, I was told that I had been selected.

I don't see myself as one type of actor. When you get one role, you start to get cast in that role for awhile because that's what people have seen you do, and have hopefully seen you do it successfully. And so, it becomes an easier thing to see you as, for casting directors and directors, and they start to think of you as that particular person or type of character. But, for me, I'm just an actor, first and foremost. The actors I respect are the real character actors, who are the real chameleon actors that completely change from role to role.

I started casting. I cast music videos, but I kept getting fired from jobs because I was iconoclastic in my ways of casting.

All directors are control freaks and very obsessive. I get the feeling that directors as kids, they all have had a childhood with not too much contact with other kids. They constructed their own reality and they continue to do it. It's a funny breed, directors.

I don't think I have advice for female directors as opposed to male directors. I think all first-time directors should try and be as prepared as they possibly can, because it's hard!

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 you do a showcase for agency managers and casting directors and you get this folder and some people had a folder that was thick and some people had a folder that was thin. And there's no fairness to it because it's not a fair business.

It's not that writing staffs don't change at all, but they don't change very much. Directors are freelancers. There are directors who do five or 10 episodes of a show every year for years, but most directors are freelance, they come and go.

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.

In my last year of drama school, I was Abigail in 'The Crucible' and Nina in 'The Seagull,' and I did some Shakespeare with the RSC. That's what casting directors saw me in, and I got put up for a lot of period drama auditions. I always get told I suit the costumes. I don't think I have a very modern-looking face.

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.

My agent in Sweden used to send off interview tapes but I decided to take it upon myself and come to London to visit casting directors which is when things first started taking off for me. I love Sweden but the industry out here is quite small so when I was given the chance to go internationally I took it.

I used Vamps as a casting couch! I pretty much did, because I was casting 'L!fe Happens' while I was on the set of Vamps, and anybody I had ever worked with, I asked to be in this movie.

I got an internship with the casting director of The Girl Next Door. I would hold the clipboard and help them in their casting sessions and get them lunch.

Once there are more African Americans and Asian Americans behind the scenes as producers, writers, and directors, I think more inclusive casting will happen.

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.

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.

Financiers don't support their directors to cast properly. They don't have the vision of an artist. They're casting to spreadsheets, and it's making movies very mediocre. The movie business used to just be called the movies. Now it should be the business movies.

It is not easy to get parts in mainstream films for most people of color. Hollywood and British writers are not writing parts for us, or the directors are not interested in casting us in parts that are color-blind.

Transgender casting is a kind of literalism. It is the same with racial casting. This means that you can now only play Othello if you are black. There is something quite tainted about it. It is a form of racism in itself.

Casting is an art, and if you're interested in people, like I am, casting is essential.

That really sets great directors apart from good directors: their ability to make you feel like you matter, even if your part is much smaller. That's one thing I found with most of the great directors I worked with: They all have that skill. Not everyone takes the time.

In N.Y.C., I auditioned for mostly 'quirky friend' roles. Since casting directors in L.A. lacked a preconceived notion of me, I was able to reinvent my type a bit, which was essential in booking the role of Amanda on 'Ugly Betty.' I don't believe I would have auditioned for that role in N.Y.

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?'

I don't go to a lot of other directors' sets; directors don't come to mine. Directors are all very cordial with each other, but they're not necessarily friendly.

In this, the late afternoon of my life, I wonder: am I casting a longer shadow or is my shadow casting a shorter me?

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 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.

I don't have any problem working with first-time directors because all directors have to start somewhere and all great directors have had a first film. So, if you take the view that you don't want to work with a first-timer, you might miss out on a fantastic opportunity.

I can't even begin to tell you how many casting couches I was attacked on. Not just by casting people, but by stars.

I understand the formula that producers hire directors and directors are hired to direct and actors are hired to act. I don't have any conflict with any directors because I know they're the boss.