Casting Director Quotes

A casting director who'd cast me in 'Assassins' sent a video to Kevin Reynolds, the director, and Mel Gibson, whose company is producing '187.' Then I went in and auditioned, and a few hours later, they called me. ~ Kelly Rowan

I once literally had a casting director ask my agent, 'Can she play anything other than a drunk?' ~ Carla Gallo

When 'The Pacific' came around, I had to audition the old-fashioned way. It was the casting director and then the producer and then another producer and another producer and then Spielberg and Hanks. ~ Joseph Mazzello

People have nervous tics they don't know about, and I would advise asking around. Ask the casting director, 'Is there something I'm doing?' I would see people unconsciously rocking back and forth. I roll my lips. I bite my lips and roll them. ~ Olivia Wilde

I like to audition for good projects because if it's a good project, it's an opportunity to get in front of a casting director. ~ Krysten Ritter

A lot of the stuff that's happening now, I can trace back to 'Death of a Salesman.' Francine Maisler, the casting director, saw 'Death of a Salesman' and called me in for 'Unbroken.' The casting director of 'Normal Heart' had seen 'Salesman' too. I look back on it now, and it's like one thing led to another; it was a chain reaction. ~ Finn Wittrock

The first thing I look for, in addition to a performer's range, is a performer's look in comparison to the character. That is very important to me as a casting director. ("The Making of Dual Mania: Filmmaking Chicago Style," 2018) ~ Cat Ellington

I enjoyed acting at school and went to an acting workshop for kids in Nottingham. It was twice a week after school and free to go to - ITV subsidised it. Every now and again, a casting director would turn up. 'Peak Practice' became a rite of passage for us. It was the first job I had. ~ Joe Dempsie

a myth that the church has very successfully used to its advantage. Many people were under the same impression that there are tons of Scientologists in the film and television business and that we all help each other out. The real truth is that while the church would like you to believe it wields a tremendous amount of influence in Hollywood, that is simply not the case. Throughout my career I knew of one minor casting director who was a Scientologist, but other than that, no real movers and shakers. As a matter of fact, I think identifying myself publicly as a Scientologist probably hurt my career more than it helped it as far as perception was concerned. And while some of the courses the church offered provided me with better communication skills to help land roles, the time, money, and effort I invested certainly didn't outweigh the benefit for me. ~ Leah Remini

My first soldier role was in 'Flags of Our Fathers.' Casting director Jay Binder saw that movie and was looking for soldiers for 'Journey's End,' which led to 'Generation Kill.' ~ Stark Sands

My dad was a theater actor, so I would follow him backstage. And my mom was a casting director. The moment I heard the applause and realized it would get me out of school, I was hooked. ~ Christian Slater

My mom and dad were actors when they were younger and had a horrible experience of it. My dad became a literary agent and my mom a casting director. ~ Daniel Radcliffe

My mother became a casting director, and she cast me in a soap opera called 'One Life to Live.' I was, like, 8 years old, playing a kid who had hurt himself on a skateboard. I had, like, three lines. I did the lines, and everybody in the studio applauded - I was immediately hooked after that. I was like, 'This is the life for me.' ~ Christian Slater

I don't know what I'm qualified to do, film-wise ... So it's really down to a director or a casting director to find something that they think I could do. ~ Larry Mullen

My strangest auditioning experience was when I was reading for a TV show, and right when I started the audition, the casting director left the room and yelled at me from the hallway to keep reading. ~ Danny Strong

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! ~ Maddie Hasson

The Dead was cool, It's a great horror story. I went to the casting director of this movie and talked to him, then they called my agent and had me come in and read for it and they wanted to use me. ~ Matthew McGrory

I used to put that I studied with Stella Adler on my resume. I never met Stella Adler. But if you told a casting director you studied with Stella Adler all the sudden they'd let you in the door. ~ Billy Bob Thornton

I got space from Travis Air Force Base, went back to the Philippine Islands and made it a point to meet the only American casting director in the Philippines. I was off and running. ~ R. Lee Ermey

I was the first person in the world to audition for 'The Hobbit'. The casting director told me that when I went in. That's a lot of pressure, isn't it? The first person in the world. ~ Jack Whitehall

A New York casting director, who shall remain nameless, once said to me, 'Marcia, you have what I call the flaring-nostril look, and until you get something done about it, you will never, ever work.' ~ Marcia Gay Harden

That Steuben, who needed a translator, what with his English vocabulary consisting almost entirely of swear words, ended up being the perfect hire to upgrade the Continental Army should rattle every search committee, small-business owner, casting director, college admissions officer, headhunter, and voter. ~ Sarah Vowell

Every casting director I've met is a woman. ~ Cameron Diaz

The casting director on the movie made me aware of her. She told me what to watch Starter For Ten, which I did and thought she was great in. She was just so charming and beautiful. But I felt she could probably look plain if we tried. And when I subsequently met with her, I was so charmed by her vulnerability and sweetness. Those were two qualities that were the most important for that character. ~ Nicole Holofcener

The first heart you win over is that casting director. In first meetings, they'll be the ones who see your pitch for the character. And then as you get further up, they'll be the ones reading with you in front of the network. ~ Michael Mosley

Earlier in my career, I needed to be the writer, casting director, set designer, leading man, and producer. I've been eliminating a lot of those jobs. I'm an executive producer right now. I still get to pick the best screenplays. ~ Danny Meyer

But let us not forget, too, that it was John Adams who nominated George Washington to be commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. It was John Adams who insisted that Jefferson be the one to write the Declaration of Independence. And it was President John Adams who made John Marshall chief justice of the Supreme Court. As a casting director alone, he was brilliant. Abigail ~ David McCullough

Auditioning is such an unnatural thing. You're in a tiny little room with, like, seven people cramped together, acting to a casting director; just, none of it makes any sense. ~ Jane Levy

It is so great to go to a casting director and have them wanting to talk about the show that you are in. It's such a great icebreaker. It just makes the environment so much more relaxed. ~ Nathalie Emmanuel

If you're going to go to an audition, you don't want to go in trying to force yourself into some archetype that has been thought up by a director and translated by a casting director. ~ Timothy Simons

Deb Zane, our casting director on the Hunger Games was very sanguine, from the beginning, about just blocking out what everybody else says that they want. ~ Nina Jacobson

Words and stories washed ashore on that ancient way of the sea, and we made of them new songs. The sun came again, casting shadows that we peeled off the street to make of them new clothes. ~ Susan Abulhawa

I got a lot of energy from directing the film 'Ladies In Lavender.' You wonder if you have the stamina because as an actor you can lounge around the trailer during the scenes you're not in, but as a director, you're there from first thing in the morning to last thing at night every day of the week. I found it incredibly energising. ~ Charles Dance

Tell me you didn't really watch Nausicaa."
Miho tried to keep a serious face, which must have been difficult enough in her flannel Hello Kitty pajamas. But the girl was a terrible liar. She smirked.
"No. Kiki just ended. So much for our Miyazaki marathon."
"We got through two movies," Sakura said. "Tonight, that's a marathon."
They'd wanted to watch movies tonight, just to clear their minds, and had agreed on nothing violent. All three of them loved the films of Miyazaki, who had become perhaps the most successful director in Japan while making only animated films. Kara had vetoed Howl's Moving Castle because she'd seen it too recently, and they had all seen My Neighbor Totoro far too many times, so they had started with Spirited Away. ~ Thomas Randall

For it is not the bare Words, but the Scope of the writer that giveth true light, by which any writing is to bee interpreted; and they that insist upon single Texts, without considering the main Designe, can derive no thing from them clearly; but rather by casting atomes of Scripture, as dust before mens eyes, make everything more obscure than it is; an ordinary artifice of those who seek not the truth, but their own advantage. ~ Thomas Hobbes

I know that the day will come when my sight of this earth shall be lost, and life will take its leave in silence, drawing the last curtain over my eyes.
Yet stars will watch at night, and morning rise as before, and hours heave like sea waves casting up pleasures and pains.
When I think of this end of my moments, the barrier of the moments breaks and I see by the light of death thy world with its careless treasures. Rare is its lowliest seat, rare is its meanest of lives.
Things that I longed for in vain and things that I got
let them pass. Let me but truly possess the things that I ever spurned and overlooked. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

I had a very hard time accepting myself as a character actress because I wanted to be glamorous and a leading lady like everybody else. I looked in the mirror and thought I looked pretty good, but casting didn't ever see me that way. ~ Beth Grant

I mean, it feels like a homecoming in a really wonderfully comfortable place to be - the same director, the same musical director, my same dressing room! [laughs] It's a great place to build something with freedom. ~ Kelli O'Hara

As somebody who has been an executive producer on a television series, I can tell you that increasing director diversity is as simple as hiring more women and more people of color. ~ Lesli Linka Glatter

Art directors speak in pictures. If you want an art director to understand what you're saying, you need to draw some lines and circles on a piece of paper. ~ Nevada Scheffler

Casting yourself as a victim is the antithesis of doing your work. Don't do it. If you're doing it, stop. ~ Steven Pressfield

Joe Mantello is the uber director. I wrote him a card tonight saying basically, 'Will you adopt me?' ~ Jeffrey Tambor

In the eighties, I was fortunate to be one of the young art directors that Jerry Roach, creative director at JWT New York, took under his wing. He taught me how to use typography more visually, to push against design norms and not to rely on preconceived notions of what something should look like. I learned that nuance is everything and to agonize over the details. I have Jerry to thank for driving plenty of people crazy over the years! ~ John Butler

Short films really helped me develop as a story teller, animator, and as a director. ~ John Lasseter

You pick projects for the part, the director, and the script. I just want to do different, interesting stuff. ~ Daniel Radcliffe

You are a man of extreme passion, a hungry man not quite sure where his appetite lies, a deeply frustrated man striving to project his individuality against a backdrop of rigid conformity. You exist in a half-world suspended between two superstructures, one self-expression and the other self-destruction. You are strong, but there is a flaw in your strength, and unless you learn to control it the flaw will prove stronger than your strength and defeat you. The flaw? Explosive emotional reaction out of all proportion to the occasion. Why? Why this unreasonable anger at the sight of others who are happy or content, this growing contempt for people and the desire to hurt them? All right, you think they're fools, you despise them because their morals, their happiness is the source of your frustration and resentment. But these are dreadful enemies you carry within yourself--in time destructive as bullets. Mercifully, a bullet kills its victim. This other bacteria, permitted to age, does not kill a man but leaves in its wake the hulk of a creature torn and twisted; there is still fire within his being but it is kept alive by casting upon it faggots of scorn and hate. He may successfully accumulate, but he does not accumulate success, for he is his own enemy and is kept from truly enjoying his achievements. ~ Truman Capote

The love scenes that worked, regardless of the director, were the ones where the actors weren't fearful. When somebody was fearful, you could see it right away. It takes you out of the story, and that's to be avoided at all costs. ~ Jennifer Beals

If you put up posters around town for high-school kids, high-school kids will come. If you're casting politicians, you can't put up posters and have politicians come down. ~ Gus Van Sant

Our elected officials are able to regulate even the most personal aspects of our lives, from the cleanliness of the air we breathe to the identity of the people we marry. Keeping this in mind, casting a ballot is not just essential - it's practical! ~ Maria Rubio

(When asked what a director does) I help. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski

Tancredi and Angelica were passing in front of them at that moment, his gloved right hand on her waist, their outspread arms interlaced, their eyes gazing into each other's. The black of his tail coat, the pink of her dress, combining formed a kind of strange jewel. They were the most moving sight there, two young people in love dancing together, blind to each other's defects, deaf to the warnings of fate, deluding themselves that the whole course of their lives would be as smooth as the ballroom floor, unknowning actors made to play the parts of Juliet and Romeo by a director who had concealed the fact that tomb and poison were already in the script. Neither of them was good, each full of self-interest, swollen with secret aims; yet there was something sweet and touching about them both; those murky but ingenuous ambitions of theirs were obliterated by the words of jesting tenderness he was murmuring in her ear, by the scent of her hair, by the mutual clasp of those bodies of theirs destined to die. . .

For them death was purely an intellectual concept, a fact of knowledge as it were and no more, not an experience which pierced the marrow of their bones. Death, oh yes, it existed of course, but it was something that happened to others. The thought occurred to Don Fabrizio that it was ignorance of this supreme consolation that made the young feel sorrows much more sharply than the old; the latter are nearer the safety exit. ~ Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

And Eisenstein was doing it,too!As a young boy Sasha had seen his Battleship Potemkin in the Khudoshestvennyi Theater on the Arbat Sqaure.The cashiers,ticket-takers,cloak room attendants, all were dressed in sailors' uniforms;it looked just grand,it set the mood.The world had acknowledged BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN as the best film and Eisenstein as the greatest director.Now the 'greatest' was loyally serving the tyrant and executioner.Here was an example for his argument with Gleb about genius and villainy. Gleb also read the paper and gave Sasha a meaningful glance. 'Well then one more sycophant. ~ Anatoli Rybakov

One morning as I was leaving, the director said I didn't have to leave the set anymore. What happened? Why did they change their ways of treating me? I came to the realization that it was because I had a mother. My mother spoke highly of me, and to me. But more important, whether they met her or simply heard about her, she was there with me. She had my back, supported me. This is the role of the mother, and in that visit I really saw clearly, and for the first time, why a mother is really important. Not just because she feeds and also loves and cuddles and even mollycoddles a child, but because in an interesting and maybe an eerie and unworldly way, she stands in the gap. She stands between the unknown and the known. In Stockholm, my mother shed her protective love down around me and without knowing why people sensed that I had value. ~ Maya Angelou

I would direct TV. That's a little different. It's more of a contained world as a director. When you're doing a film you get on the rollercoaster, you put the safety bar down and then you're gone. And it's hard. It's hard, too, as a parent, I think, because the hours are so long. It's hard. ~ Cheryl Hines

The cities of Italy are now deluged with droves of these creatures [tour groups], for they never separate, and you see them, forty in number, pouring along a street with their director - now in front, now at the rear, circling them like a sheep dog - and really the process is as like herding as may be. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin

I spent four months in Prague in these blue rooms reacting to nothing and you basically place your faith in the hands of the director and the special effects co-coordinator and you keep your fingers crossed and hope that the creatures look really scary. ~ Edward Burns

George Tenet has been the director of central intelligence since 1997, time enough to have changed the Agency's culture. He has failed. He should go. ~ Richard Perle

I think there has only been one time in my entire career that I've ever gone back to shoot a scene. And it was a scene that, when we were shooting it, we knew that it wasn't working. We knew there was a disagreement between the actor and director. So, we went back. ~ Melissa Leo

To be honest, I don't usually do very much research, especially if I'm working with a director who also wrote the screenplay. They've usually done a tonne of research. And they'll tell you about it from their perspective which is better than doing your own research ... ~ Christina Ricci

Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day. ~ Bruce Mau

The doctor unfurled her wings into Maximum Righteousness Mode. The flaming sword was in her hand. She pointed with it like the archangel casting us out of the garden. Get your ass back there! ~ Daryl Gregory

He dreamed of being director of the FBI instead of attorney general. Considering some of the unsavory characters who had held the latter post, Milo didn't have the credentials for it. ~ Dean Koontz

extra," an incentive to help kids get their work done.
How my thinking has evolved over the years! About eight years ago, the director of kindergarten for my school district approached me to develop a new approach to learning centers that would better meet the needs of all students. We decided to try literacy work stations, ~ Debbie Diller

It was a very, very intense and long casting process [for The Killing] because we really had to find the right people who could carry the weight of this story, who had the chops and who had the spirit, where they could bring in so much of their own selves to these characters. So, the casting process took many months. ~ Veena Sud

It is the spirit of the poets that gives the soldiers strength to fight. ~ Casting Crowns

One of the tasks that any artistic director has is, you're trying to bring elements together that will work. The truth is that you could bring all the best talents in the world together and produce a big turkey. ~ Kevin Spacey

Sometimes what you lose in the time it takes to let an actor do something that you don't like as a director, you gain in not shutting them down creatively by telling them their idea sucks. ~ Seth Rogen

John Lee Hancock is someone that I had admired from afar. I think he is a wonderful director ... in the tradition I would say both of Clint Eastwood and Frank Capra. ~ Alison Owen

The writing is really hard. You're alone. It really pulls it out of you. You pull it out of your head. But when you're a director, you're shopping - you're picking this actor, you're picking this scene. It's like the most intense kinetic high-speed shopping of all time. You sit in a chair and it will all come rushing at you like a wind tunnel. ~ Tony Gilroy

I usually do about five cuts as a director. I haven't ever directed a film where I haven't made five passes through the movie, and that takes a long time. ~ Steven Spielberg

She's got no charisma of any kind [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn director. ~ Christopher Hitchens