Audition Film Quotes

Improvisation is the power of spontaneous observation.

Marlon Brando wanted to make Don Corleone ‘look like a bulldog’, so he stuffed his cheeks with cotton wool for the audition. For actual filming, he wore a mouthpiece made by a dentist;

I had no idea, when I was first asked by my agents to audition for a film called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, that it would be any different in terms of scale to the jobs I’d done previously. In my mind it was another Borrowers: a relatively high-budget film with lots of children and, if I played my cards right, a part for me. But if I didn’t get a part? That was okay too. It wasn’t the be-all and end-all. There was a good chance something else would come along.

The Life of Riley in its best-known version evolved from a prospective Groucho Marx vehicle called The Flotsam Family. The Marx series failed at audition when the would-be sponsor wouldn’t accept Groucho in what was, for him, a straight role—as head of a family. Then producer Irving Brecher saw a film, The McGuerins of Brooklyn, with a rugged-looking and typically American blue-collar man, William Bendix, in one of the leading roles. There, on the screen, was his character. A new audition was recorded, with Bendix as star and the character renamed Chester A. Riley. It became a solid midlevel hit.

All that day we went about stunned – we, the small town of real people behind the corporate logo of a ringed blue planet spinning through starry space. In the studio's Corner Store, in small groups that met on the company streets and in a hundred offices, we pieced our own experiences together with what was coming to light in the media. The suspect: a deranged, 43-year-old drifter who two days earlier had allegedly killed three people in Albuquerque, NM. He had fled to California where for reasons unknown he had been trying to contact actor-producer Michael Landon on the day of the shootings. The employees he had approached had repeatedly turned him away, since Landon had no particular connection with our studio. But just after dark the man had come back to the main gate again. He had walked up to a young actress waiting for her ride after an audition, said "hello" to her and then stepped over to the guardhouse. "I heard a shot and looked up," a secretary who had been passing nearby told me. "I saw Jeren fall and heard him groan. And there was this guy in a gray jacket just standing over him, pointing down at him with a gun. Then he raised the gun and pointed it at the other guard and shot again, and I saw Armando fall out the other side of the guardhouse. For a split second – just because we're at a movie studio – I thought it must be a movie they were filming. But there weren't any lights or cameras, and I realized it was real, and I thought, ‘He's gonna come after us because we saw it!' So I ran. I felt I was running for my life.

they don’t see each other nearly as often now that she’s married and no longer a regularly employed actress. But that’s not the only reason she wanted to have lunch. She was pretty sure, though, that if she said she had something to tell him, he’d get the wrong idea. Aware that she’s been auditioning again lately, he might assume she’s landed a plum role in some film—or at least back in the soaps, where she spent her early career. That couldn’t be farther from what she had to tell him—and when she broke the real news, his reaction was even more dramatic than she’d anticipated. “Noooooo!” he wailed. “How could you do this to me?” She didn’t bother to point out that it wasn’t really about him. Jesus has a notorious flair for making everything about him. She used to find it an endearing quirk, but it wore thin pretty quickly today. “Can’t you just be happy for me?” she interrupted his ongoing lament. “How can I be happy

Curiously we did it all over again when we made the Live At Pompeii film, this time using another dog, called Mademoiselle Nobs. On the positive side, even when hard pressed, at least we resisted the temptation to construct an entire album of barking dogs, and to audition a clutch of session dogs desperate to make it in the music business.

For instance: years into the future the building where X Factor is filmed could be a house. The residents may witness the spectre of Simon Cowell saying “That’s possibly the worst audition I’ve ever seen,” over and over again.

auditioning for the opening credits of a Bond film.” “Now, that sounds glamorous.” “Trained dancers, they advertised for. Then they had us all strip and bounce up and down on trampolines

forth on our front lawn for a half hour while I try to memorize my lines for an upcoming audition for a low-budget movie called My Daughter’s Tears. Could there be a film title more perfectly suited to my Special Skill?

Orson Welles, Bill Johnstone, and Bret Morrison were the best-known voices of the Shadow. Welles was a 22–year-old unknown, a regular toiling in anonymity on The March of Time, when he won the role in audition. His salary, $185 a week, seemed a fortune for a half-hour weekly job that required no rehearsal. His agreement with Blue Coal allowed him to go on without as much as a prior peek at his script: thus, as he told film director Peter Bogdanovich, when he was thrown into a snake pit, he didn’t know how he’d get out till the show ended.

Standing in front of a mirror, it dawned on him that what had been an enjoyable discussion had become an audition in front of one of the world’s great film directors.

When you become old ... When you become old, you find yourself auditioning for the role of a lifetime; then, after interminable rehearsals, you're finally starring in a horror film--a talentless, irresponsible, and above all low-budget horror film, in which (as is the way with horror films) they're saving the worst for last.

The potential for your artistry when truly tapped, will evoke certain specific reactions in the body, such as temperature change, a flight or fight response and even a change in saliva production. If you can commit to your craft this deeply, the level of specificity and authenticity of your performance will scale new heights.

4. Who cares if you can nail your performance once. I want you to be able to do it over and over, as you would on set when they move from the master shot to the medium shot to the close up and then do the same thing again in the turnaround. That would be impressive to me.