Casting Director Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. I often go to lunch meetings with my agent, a gallerist or a casting director, but if not, I stay at home and prepare my own food because I love to cook. I'm great at pasta, fish and nice salads.

Jordi Molla

#5. I once literally had a casting director ask my agent, 'Can she play anything other than a drunk?'

Carla Gallo

#6. I met my agent through a casting director here in Wilmington after I auditioned for a Disney movie.

Maddie Hasson

#7. 'Mariah' was the first series-regular role for me, and that really came about because of 'Secret Honor.' That really was a direct result of that. Because now I had an agent and was submitted for that part, for James Malone. And ... I was the casting director's first choice for James Malone.

Philip Baker Hall

#8. 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

#9. 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

#10. Things maybe take longer usually when it comes to TV - especially network TV. There are usually multiple levels that you have to go through in terms of the casting director, the producers, the studio, the network, reading with other people.

Andre Holland

#11. 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

#12. 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.

Olivia Wilde

#13. Unless you have a real passion for making movies, then don't bother. I had to carry energy and light into every meeting, only to be told, 'We don't want you.' I couldn't take it personally. You just have to wait, and live for those moments when the casting director likes you.

Laura Harring

#14. One casting director told me, 'You're the next Leonardo DiCaprio,' and when I heard that, I said, 'Let's talk about how I don't want anything to do with being like Leo.' He's an amazing actor, but the films we're pushing to do are different. I'm going my own way
in a big way.

Devon Sawa

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. Every casting director I've met is a woman.

Cameron Diaz

#18. There is no casting director; there is no producer monitoring your upload button. Anyone that looks like anyone can upload a video. I think YouTube and the digital space does set a really good example for the rest of the industry in that sense.

Lilly Singh

#19. If you're a casting director, you're going to be curious to see what Timothy Spall's son is like. But when you get in the door, you have to have something to offer.

Rafe Spall

#20. I was on a couple of scholarships. I had a job in the school administrative office. I had a job as a hat-check boy in a restaurant. I had another job as an assistant to a casting director. It took a lot to get myself enough money to put myself through Juilliard.

Kevin Spacey

#21. 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

#22. A friend of my mom's was a casting director so, really as kind of a lark, I had a couple of acting jobs that had just enough exposure to give me the option to continue if I wanted to. I followed through with it.

Ben Affleck

#23. 'Drive' came to me because the casting director knew my manager and called and said, 'You've always talked to me about Albert wanting to play the heavy. I think he should read this.' My ears just perked up.

Albert Brooks

#24. 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

#25. I used to take it personally when a casting director didn't like me or I didn't get picked for something. Now I realize you can't do that. It'll mess with your self-esteem. Don't take rejection overly personally. If that doesn't work out, there's something else waiting for you.

Sierra McCormick

#26. I didn't really know what I wanted to do, and then I got this call from a casting director in Los Angeles. She remembered me from something years before, and she called my mom wanting me to audition for this thing.

Scott Speedman

#27. 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

#28. I've been an actor for 10 years now, and if anything I want to talk more about my dad. He taught me that even if you get past the casting director's door you've still got to do your homework: you've still got to work hard.

Rafe Spall

#29. If a movie doesn't even have financing yet, they'll do a table read for it at a casting director's office with actors, for the producer and the writer, just to hear if the movie is working.

Bill Hader

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. 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

#33. 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

#34. As an actor, when you walk into a room to audition, you get five minutes with a casting director, who doesn't even look at you, most of the time.

Mark Duplass

#35. Gastronomy is my hobby. I'm simply the casting director. Once I've brought all the right people together, it is they who must work together to tell a story.

Alain Ducasse

#36. 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

#37. 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

#38. I've done auditions where the casting director is taking the paper out of my hand in the middle of reading.

Kevin Hart

#39. 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

#40. 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

#41. I used to do a Saturday drama group called Young Blood Theatre Company with school-friends in west London - nothing to do with my mum and dad. A casting director came to pick people out for a new BBC children's series called 'MI High.' She picked me, I auditioned, and I got the job.

Bel Powley

#42. 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

#43. 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

#44. 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

#45. Casting, to me, is always the same. It's a very important part of a director's job. I pick people that I sense I'd like to be in a room with and will enjoy the rehearsal process with because that's the best part.

Scott Ellis

#46. You have to get the casting right. You have to get the people behind it. Your director might not be the right director for the project. And then, it has to test and those people in that room, wherever they are, have to turn those buttons the right way at the right time.

Diego Klattenhoff

#47. So many people have said this, but it's true: 95 percent of what I do as a director is casting and getting people who can bear the load of what you're asking them to do and creating this emotionally safe environment.

Lynn Shelton

#48. I always think that a director who knows about the technical side, but cares about the acting performances and casting as well, is ahead of the game.

Bob Balaban

#49. I always used to say, as a director, that I could make anybody good in a movie if you found the right part. It all comes down to casting.

Corbin Bernsen

#50. 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.

Cary Fukunaga

#51. I had great luck with Tim McGraw twice in 'Friday Night Lights' and 'The Kingdom.' I love finding off-beat casting and finding someone you know in one way and you reinvent them in another way. I like doing that as a director.

Peter Berg

#52. You read a script, you try and think through what is the best, most wide-ranging way of telling the story: who stylistically, character-logically, psychologically fits inside the world of what you're trying to do. A lot of it, when you're casting, is trying to get yourself in the head of a director.

Scott Rudin

#53. Casting sometimes is fate and destiny more than skill and talent, from a director's point of view.

Steven Spielberg

#54. My first in, my first break, was I met a director and got to talking with her, and she happened to be casting this movie that she had written. That was ten years ago. That got me to Hollywood. I got paid $700 bucks.

Chris Pratt

#55. A well known director wouldn't take the chance on casting me for an American role after he discovered that I was English. Some time later, he expressed his regret that he hadn't taken the chance with me.

Marsha Thomason