Casting Audition Quotes

Do you know those movies about the scary cult of, like, creepy kids who can read minds and worship the devil and live in the cornfields or something? Well, if they were casting for one of those movies, this girl would get the part. They wouldn’t even have to audition her. They would take one look at her and be like, Yes, you are creepy girl number three.

Against that time, if ever that time come,   When I shall see thee frown on my defects,   When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,   Call'd to that audit by advis'd respects;

Amma was shorter, with African hips and thighs perfect slave girl material one director told her when she walked into an audition for a play about Emancipation whereupon she walked right back out again in turn a casting director told Dominique she was wasting his time when she turned up for a Victorian drama when there weren’t any black people in Britain then she said there were, called him ignorant before also leaving the room and in her case, slamming the door

Confiding Julie, the first to get breasts, was cynical by Thanksgiving. Since no one else looked like the class slut, she was given the position, and she soon capitulated. She bleached her hair with Sun In, and started to mess around with boys who played in garage rock bands. Marianne, because she had long legs and a stem neck, rushed from school to her pliés at the barre, her hair in a bun, her head held high, to arch and sweep and bow toward the mirror until night fell. Cara delivered her audition piece flat, but since she had a wheat-colored rope of braid that brushed her waist, she would be Titania in the school play. Emily, bluntnosed and loud, could outact Cara in her sleep; when she saw the cast list she turned silently to her best friend, who handed her a box of milk chocolate creams. Tall, strong, bony Evvy watched Elise try out her maddening dimple. She cornered her outside class to ask her if she thought she was cute. Elise said yes, and Evvy threw a pipette of acid, stolen from the biology lab, in her face. Dodie hated her tight black hair that wouldn’t grow. She crept up behind blond Karen in home ec class and hacked out a fistful with pinking shears. Even Karen understood that it wasn’t personal.

George Clooney spent his first years in Hollywood getting rejected at auditions. He wanted the producers and directors to like him, but they didn’t and it hurt and he blamed the system for not seeing how good he was. This perspective should sound familiar. It’s the dominant viewpoint for the rest of us on job interviews, when we pitch clients, or try to connect with an attractive stranger in a coffee shop. We subconsciously submit to what Seth Godin, author and entrepreneur, refers to as the “tyranny of being picked.” Everything changed for Clooney when he tried a new perspective. He realized that casting is an obstacle for producers, too—they need to find somebody, and they’re all hoping that the next person to walk in the room is the right somebody. Auditions were a chance to solve their problem, not his. From Clooney’s new perspective, he was that solution. He wasn’t going to be someone groveling for a shot. He was someone with something special to offer. He was the answer to their prayers, not the other way around. That was what he began projecting in his auditions—not exclusively his acting skills but that he was the man for the job. That he understood what the casting director and producers were looking for in a specific role and that he would deliver it in each and every situation, in preproduction, on camera, and during promotion. The

George Clooney spent his first years in Hollywood getting rejected at auditions. He wanted the producers and directors to like him, but they didn’t and it hurt and he blamed the system for not seeing how good he was. This perspective should sound familiar. It’s the dominant viewpoint for the rest of us on job interviews, when we pitch clients, or try to connect with an attractive stranger in a coffee shop. We subconsciously submit to what Seth Godin, author and entrepreneur, refers to as the “tyranny of being picked.” Everything changed for Clooney when he tried a new perspective. He realized that casting is an obstacle for producers, too—they need to find somebody, and they’re all hoping that the next person to walk in the room is the right somebody. Auditions were a chance to solve their problem, not his. From Clooney’s new perspective, he was that solution. He wasn’t going to be someone groveling for a shot. He was someone with something special to offer. He was the answer to their prayers, not the other way around. That was what he began projecting in his auditions—not exclusively his acting skills but that he was the man for the job. That he understood what the casting director and producers were looking for in a specific role and that he would deliver it in each and every situation, in preproduction, on camera, and during promotion. The difference between the right and the wrong perspective is everything.

Jimmy’s goal since childhood, he explained to Siegel, had been to join the cast of Saturday Night Live. He was endearing. After a two-hour call, Siegel offered to represent him. She had one question, however. “Why don’t you stay and graduate?” Jimmy was a semester shy of a degree. Siegel suggested that they get started in the summer, so he’d have a bachelor’s degree to fall back on, just in case. “No, no,” Jimmy insisted. “I need to get on Saturday Night Live, and you’re going to make it happen, because you know Adam Sandler! I don’t want to do anything else.” Siegel knew this was a long shot—and a long-term endeavor—especially for an out-of-town kid with zero acting credits. But for some reason, she couldn’t turn him down; she had never met someone as focused and passionate about a single dream as this grinning bumpkin from the tiny town of Saugerties, New York. And though his skills were rough, given some time in the industry, she thought he might just make it. “OK, let’s do this,” she said. So, in January 1996 Jimmy quit college and moved to Los Angeles. For six months, Siegel booked him gigs on small, local stand-up comedy stages. Then, without warning, SNL put a call out for auditions; three cast members would be leaving the show. Having worked with one of the departing actors, David Spade, Siegel pulled a few strings and arranged a Hail Mary for the young Jimmy Fallon: an audition at The Comic Strip. SO HERE HE WAS. Fresh-faced, sweating in his light shirt, holding his Troll doll. In front of Lorne Michaels and a phalanx of Hollywood shakers. When Jimmy ended his three-minute bit, the audience clapped politely. True to his reputation, Michaels didn’t laugh. Not once. Jimmy went home and awaited word. Finally, the results came: SNL had invited Tracy Morgan, Ana Gasteyer, and Chris Kattan, each of whom had hustled in the comedy scene for years, to join the cast. Jimmy—the newbie whose well-connected manager had finagled an invite—was crushed. “Was he completely raw? A hundred percent,” Siegel says. But, the SNL people said, “Let’s keep an eye on him.

The casting had been more difficult. Macdonnell and Meston both wanted William Conrad for the lead, but CBS objected. Conrad was known as a heavy from his movie roles (Body and Soul; Sorry, Wrong Number; The Killers). He was also a busy radio actor (Escape, Suspense, The Adventures of Sam Spade, many others) with a distinctive air presence. As Conrad told Hickman: “I think when they started casting for it, somebody said, ‘Good Christ, let’s not get Bill Conrad, we’re up to you-know-where with Bill Conrad.’ So they auditioned everybody, and as a last resort they called me. And I went in and read about two lines … and the next day they called me and said, ‘Okay, you have the job.

Just as well, since the director, casting director, and studio executives would probably have frowned on them ending the audition desperately dry-humping.

We’re all responsible for casting the stars in the stories of our own lives, and she cast me in the role of her husband. Our marriage was an open audition, and I’m not sure either of us got the parts we deserved.

I don't understand! Why am I tied up?” Thane walked around the bed, his eyes never leaving her. “You said you wanted to be in a movie, didn't you?” “Yes, but, I thought...”” “You thought you were coming to a casting call. And you are. Oh yes, you are,” Thane said. “But...€”but what about Chloe and the other girls? I'm so confused. I need my clothes. Please, please untie me!” Her head pounded, and her brain felt so fuzzy. She couldn't think. Why was the room spinning? Thane laughed again. “You still don't get it, do you? You wanted to be in a movie, and you're just in time for your audition.” Diamond tried to think straight. Nothing made sense. She felt drugged. “Wha? What? I...€”I don't understand.” Thane flicked on the lights, and Diamond twisted her head away from the sudden brightness. “You will be the star tonight, my dear girl,” Thane whispered. Then, in a louder voice, he called, “Lights. Camera. Action.” Diamond blinked her eyes open, straining to see in the harsh, glaring light. Two large movie cameras were positioned directly over the bed. Oh, no! Oh, no! Her heart thudding, she jerked and thrashed against the ropes once more. “No!” she screamed. “Let me go! Please, please, let me go!

the die is cast, There will be time to audit The accounts later, there will be sunlight later And the equation will come out at last.

When I turned twenty-one, having hardly started working as an actor, I was asked to do a reading with Elia Kazan, practically the biggest director in the world in both stage and screen, for a new movie he was casting. It was called America, America, and it was going to tell the story of a young Greek man’s journey to the States. They were trying to find a young actor, relatively unknown, probably ethnic looking, to play the lead role. I thought I had a shot at it. I don’t know if I would have excelled at it, but I felt I had a real chance because I fit the description. But I was late and I missed the audition. I went there and they were gone and it was over. They got somebody else.

minutes before ten o’clock, the time of his audition. “Hello,” Levi said walking into

Improvisation and sketch comedy let me choose who I wanted to be. I didn’t audition to play the sexy girl, I just played her. I got to cast myself. I cast myself as sexy girls, old men, rock stars, millionaire perverts, and rodeo clowns. I played werewolves and Italian prostitutes and bitchy cheerleaders. I was never too this or not enough that. Every week on SNL I had the opportunity to write whatever I wanted. And then I was allowed to read it! And people had to listen! And once in a blue moon it got on TV! And maybe five times it was something really good. Writing gave me an incredible amount of power, and my currency became what I wrote and said and did. If you write a scene for yourself you can say in the stage directions, “THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD ENTERS THE BAR AND ALL THE MEN AND WOMEN TURN THEIR HEADS.

Do you know those movies about the scary cult of, like, creepy kids who can read minds and worship the devil and live in the cornfields or something? Well, if they were casting for one of those movies, this girl would get the part. They wouldn’t even have to audition her.

playwright and the artistic director of the Urban Arts Corps, which she started up in the ’60s. After I auditioned, she cast me. I found out I had the role

I knew that my auditioning for a hearing role would probably shock some casting directors or producers. It might make them uncomfortable, but was necessary. A role was written for a hearing character because creators and writers likely hadn’t even imagined the possibility of having a Deaf character in their story. Just by showing up, I might stretch the boundaries of their imagination a little bit, push them outside the box, make them consider adding different dimensions to the role. In the end I might not get the job, but at the very least I’d plant an idea in their heads to consider including Deaf characters in that or a future production.

They were auditioning in pairs, so I found myself alongside a young girl in front of three or four casting executives. The girl had huge hair and was wearing a very colourful dress. “There’s no script,” they told us. “When we say so, we want you both to mime as if you’ve just heard the doorbell and you’re opening up the door and Mr. Bean is standing there. You think you can do that?” I nodded. I’d been through quite a few auditions by this time so I wasn’t too nervous. The girl, though, seemed kind of kooky. She turned to the casting people and said: “Are we allowed to faint?” There was a moment. The casting people exchanged a look. I found myself thinking: wow, she’s really going for it. Maybe I need to up my game. “I think we’d rather you didn’t faint,” one of them said. She looked a bit crestfallen, but she nodded and the scene started. We both mimed opening up the door and then, before I could react at all and at the very top of her voice, the kooky girl inexplicably screamed: “MOTHER GOOSE!” And she hit the floor like a toppled tree.

They are all coming now to see what part they played... Auditions are over. The Script is written and casting is closed.

For her audition, she performed a scene from All About Eve, her favorite movie, and as she brought the unlit cigarette, stolen from a woman’s purse in the lobby, to her lips, she said, “Slow curtain. The end,” and took a long drag. The director began to clap, smiling broadly, looking from side to side at the other people at the casting table. “That was wild,” he told her, shaking her hand, “just wild as hell.” When she walked into the lobby, her parents asked her how it went. “Fasten your seat belts,” Annie said, the cigarette dangling from her lips, “it’s going to be a bumpy night.” The Fangs had no idea what the hell she was talking about.

Here's the reality, guys: you save up for years to go 'Out West' and you spend everything you have in six months living in a roach infested hole in K-town, paying for "casting workshops" so you can meet managers and casting directors who don't give two shits about you. You cut your hair a little bit or grow a moustache and you have to get new headshots because people in Hollywood fundamentally lack imagination and can't even begin to fathom 'who you are as an actor' unless your headshot looks exactly like you do on the day of. And headshots cost $300 to shoot (on the cheap end) and $100 for make-up artists and $100 to retouch and $100 to print. Plus, you need a car to get around because mass transit in Los Angeles is a goddam joke. You need to get into class so you can learn how to unlearn all the shit you learned in college theater. Meanwhile, you're in love with the city because it's new and warm all the time and there are beautiful women everywhere. But you start getting this creeping sensation like everyone is a facade of a human being and beneath every beautiful face is spiritual rot, careerism, graft, nepotism, bull shit, lies, fakery, a need to be seen and an overwhelming whorism. But don't worry, guys, because you can always get a job working as a bartender where you can sneak booze from the well and forget for a few minutes what it's like to be on the bottom of the totem pole. That's a lot of fun, especially when you discover that cocaine means you can drink forever and not get too wasted until later. You'll get a DUI eventually, but fuck it, right? Around this time you start to get bitter. Really bitter, which you'll mistake as an 'evolution of your art.' You start looking for edgy rolls. You get a dumb haircut and try to make yourself look ugly. Maybe you hit the gym or start doing improv. Something to give you an edge. You start seeing young kids coming into town all bright eyed and bushy tailed and you say 'good luck' when you mean 'eat shit and die.' You wake up one day after endless commercial auditions that you really need to make rent but can't seem to book because you 'come off as an asshole' or don't smile enough...

Carnival Cruise Lines has its own successful way of doing things, which in this case involved creating a musical group called “The Hot Shots!” The word “Fantastic” comes to mind when thinking of this musical group! Each member auditioned separately at the Carnival rehearsal facility in Miami and then rehearsed as a group until they were ready for the big leagues aboard ship. Fortunately for me and my team, which includes Jorge Fernandez, a former guitar player from Cuba and now a top flight structural engineer in the Tampa Bay area, who helps me with much of my technical work; Lucy Shaw, Chief Copy Editor; Ursula Bracker, Proofer, and lucky me Captain Hank Bracker, award winning author (including multiple gold medals), were aboard the Carnival Legend and were privileged to listen to and enjoy, quite by chance, music that covered everything from Classical Rock, to Disco, to Mo Town and the years in between. Talented Judith Mullally, Carnival’s Entertainment Director, was on hand to encourage and partake in the music with her outstanding voice and, not to be left out, were members of the ship’s repertory cast, as well as the ship’s Cruise Director. The popular Red Frog lounge on the Carnival Legend was packed to the point that one of the performances had to be held on the expansive Lido deck. However, for the rest of the nights, the lounge was packed with young and old, singing and dancing to “The Hot Shots!” - a musical group that would totally pack any venue in Florida. Pheona Baranda, from the Philippines, is cute as a button and is the lead female singer, with a pitch-perfect soprano voice. Lucas Pedreira, from Argentina, is the lead male singer and guitar player who displayed endless energy and the ability to keep the audience hopping! Paulo Baranda, Pheona’s younger brother, plays the lead guitar to perfection and behind the scenes is the band’s musical director and of course is also from the Philippines. Ygor, from Israel, is the “on the money” drummer who puts so much into what he is doing, that at one point he hurt his hand, but refused to slow down. Nick is the bass guitar player, from down under New Zealand, and Marina, the piano and keyboard player, hails from the Ukraine. As a disclaimer I admit that I hold shares in Carnival stock but there is nothing in it for me other than the pleasure of listening to this ultra-talented group which cannot and should not be denied. They were and still are the very best! However, I am sorry that just as a “Super Nova” they unfortunately can’t last. Their bright shining light is presently flaring, but this will only be for a fleeting moment and then will permanently go to black next year on January 2, 2020. That’s just the way it is, but my crew and I, as well as the many guests aboard the Carnival Legend, experienced music seldom heard anywhere, any longer…. It was a treat we will remember for years to come and we hope to see them again, as individual musical artists, or as perhaps with a new group sometime in the near future!

No, darling, I never would have got used to it. I was used to being alone, that was the truth of the matter. A very sad truth, no doubt.’ ‘Don’t distress yourself.’ ‘He was such a marvellous man.’ She was crying freely now. ‘So generous with his feelings. So unselfishly anxious to make me feel at home. But how could I? He was a stranger to me. And it is possible to love a stranger, Zoë, a great deal, so much so that all I wanted was to make him happy, and to make him think that he had made me happy. He made me lonely in a different way, and I never became familiar with that kind of loneliness.’ ‘I thought marriage was a cure for loneliness.’ ‘So did I. And there was a longing in him that made me want to comfort him. He looked so upright, so impressive, but in fact I was stronger than he was. My task was not to let him see that. We had a pleasant life, certainly, but it was like being cast in a play, without an audition. And perhaps I wasn’t always as responsive as I might have been. I don’t mean . . . ’ She blushed. ‘I mean appreciative. I was always trying to do what I thought would please him. And sometimes I just longed to get out of the house, to be on my own again. I was happier when you were there. You didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with me.’ ‘There wasn’t anything wrong with you.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘And now that I have my freedom again I don’t want it.

I auditioned for the next play our director, Dominic, had lined up: A Midsummer Night's Dream, touring at several different parks in the Puget Sound area in July and August. Dominic cast me as Puck. "A fairy?" Andy said, all innocence. "I know you're not going to comment on that," I said. "I could've made better jokes with 'Bottom.