Anthology
Casting
How filmmakers describe finding actors and working with casting directors
- Citations
- 16 citations
- Commentaries cited
- 8 commentaries
- Approximate length
- ~1,000 words
§1 What casting directors contribute
Wes Anderson, Francis Lawrence, and James Cameron name the casting directors they worked with and describe their contributions: sustained searches, recommendations, and auditions required by union rules.
Wes Anderson
And the casting director on this movie was Doug Aibel — a very good casting director, who's very discriminating. Has a very good eye for them, and also has the absolutely key thing for casting roles like this: he is totally relentless.
Wes Anderson
Well, we got our casting director, Doug Aibel, on very, very early — and we spent, I want to say, six or eight months or something searching for them. There were lots of people auditioning.
Francis Lawrence
It was something. Denise Chamian, my casting director, instantly sent her over.
James Cameron
The casting director, Mary Selway, and I had to meet every member of the North American registry from British Actors' Equity who was interested in being in this film, before we could bring anyone from the US. I think we must have met and auditioned 3,000 people.
Cameron describes a requirement to audition North American actors registered with British Actors’ Equity before bringing actors from the United States. The requirement affected both the size of the search and whom the production could hire.
§2 “There’s no movie if they aren’t great”
For Anderson, casting the two leads was essential to making Moonrise Kingdom work.
Wes Anderson
It was very clear, when Roman and I had finished this script, that the crucial thing was going to be who plays Sam and who plays Suzy — our two main characters. There's no movie if they aren't great.
§3 Planned choices and unexpected discoveries
Anderson recalls both an actor who differed from his original idea and a pairing he wanted from the start. Cameron and Hackford describe what they recognized during auditions.
Wes Anderson
Yeah, also I remember when we were casting Rushmore — Jason was not really what we had in mind.
Wes Anderson
That was my first casting thought of this movie was: "Boy, I would like to have Bill and Fran together — to have them married in this story."
James Cameron
I just read him in a lineup of actors in the normal casting methodology, and I thought he was really interesting — that he could play this really sincere but slightly smarmy guy who could then turn evil.
Taylor Hackford
He's played by Chris Bauer, who's a fabulous young actor — I discovered in New York. I didn't discover him, but I found him in the casting process. He had gone to Yale. He doesn't look like this. It just shows the chameleon quality.
§4 Finding actors outside auditions
These accounts describe people the filmmakers encountered through a location, housekeeping work, and street performance.
Wes Anderson
So we cast him in the scene because he sort of comes with the house. I was thinking, like, "What perfect casting." But he actually came with the house.
Richard O'Brien
She was cleaning for Jim when we were casting for the stage production.
Richard O'Brien
Jim Sharman found her on the streets of London. She used to — what do you call it? — busk. She was doing a bit of busking, a bit of housekeeping.
§5 Production considerations in casting
McTiernan describes an insurance condition attached to hiring Sonny Landham and his reason for giving screenwriter Shane Black a role.
John McTiernan
Here is Sonny Landham. In order to cast him, insurance company insisted we have a bodyguard. Not to protect Sonny — but to protect other people from Sonny. This giant huge man, six feet six inches tall — not Sonny, the bodyguard — who was assigned to follow Sonny twenty-four hours a day.
John McTiernan
I cast him because I wanted a writer on the set.
§6 Hiring restrictions and actors’ contributions
The Aliens commentary connects casting to limits on bringing American actors to Britain. Cameron also describes inviting the actors to personalize their costumes and armor.
James Cameron
They had a limit on how many Americans they could bring over. So they auditioned a lot of Englishmen for that role.
James Cameron
I encouraged the actors to customize their own costumes and armor.
§7 What these accounts show
The passages describe several different ways of finding and working with actors:
- Casting directors organize searches and recommend performers. Anderson credits Doug Aibel’s persistence, Lawrence recalls Denise Chamian’s recommendation, and Cameron describes his auditions with Mary Selway.
- A search can take months. Anderson recalls six to eight months looking for the two young leads in Moonrise Kingdom. Cameron estimates 3,000 auditions for Aliens under the union requirements he describes.
- An audition can change the director’s original idea. Jason Schwartzman differed from what Anderson had imagined for Rushmore. Cameron saw a combination of sincerity and menace in Bill Paxton. Other choices, such as pairing Bill Murray and Frances McDormand, began as a specific intention.
- Filmmakers also find performers through work and personal encounters. The accounts from The Life Aquatic and The Rocky Horror Picture Show describe casting outside a formal audition process.
- A casting choice can have practical conditions or additional purposes. Landham’s hiring required a bodyguard. McTiernan cast Black because he wanted a writer available on set.
These examples show how casting depends on the role, the people conducting the search, and the production’s restrictions. They do not establish a single hiring sequence or a rule that unexpected choices are always better.
Topics
Commentaries cited