Casting Directors Quotes

I’ve always thought that as long as directors and casting directors don’t see me as just Harry Potter, I’ll be OK. People have shown a lot of faith in me, and I owe them a huge debt. They’re letting me prove that I’m serious about this.

Casting directors will often say that they are open to any ethnicity, but they’re not.

You have to remind casting directors out here that you don’t just do one thing. There’s a lot of people who do just one thing.

The greatest thing about having done ‘Orange’ are the doors that have opened for me, and people have been able to see me, like the executives and the casting directors – also, all of the fantastic directors and writers for independent films.

I had been doing summer stock every summer while I was in college. We did a showcase, like most good conservatories do – monologues and things that agents and casting directors come to see. From that I got an agent.

You see these casting directors’ lists of characters, and they’re all boxed in. Twenties is the hot girlfriend, thirties you can still be hot but moving swiftly to hot mum. Forties, you’re the legal person in a pantsuit. Then, once you reach your fifties, you’re positively elderly.

I would love to do a talk show. Naturally, I would love to do more films. I’d love to be able to see casting directors more willing to put in a character who happens to be deaf. I’m not talking about doing deaf storylines, but putting in deaf characters. I’d love to be able to do Broadway.

When a show becomes successful, people want to hire the people on the show for other things, and we would all try to do other things, but we could never end up doing them, so casting directors were just like, ‘Enough of them! Don’t touch the ‘Glee’ kids, because you can’t use them!’

There’s no set formula of success in Bollywood and one needs to be constantly in touch with the casting directors to get hold of the right opportunities.

Casting director was a part-time thing, which later became a full-time job because there was a lack of casting directors in our industry and people were looking for professionals to do it.

I don’t plan, because everything goes against my plans anyways. There’s absolutely no point in planning anything. I’m just enjoying the moment. I’m meeting with a whole lot of people – casting directors, directors, agents. I have things going on everywhere, but I have no solid plans.

No, I don’t think it is required for casting directors to be actors too. My mentor Gautam Kishanchandani cannot act to save his life!

Personally, I’ve always had to face casting directors or producers saying, ‘You’re right for the part, but nahh, you’re not quite what we’re looking for.’

An accent like mine and a face like mine, I think a lot of the time it’s easy for casting directors to just stick me in as a bad boy, but ‘Being Human’ took a risk on me – bless ’em – and I’m not that bad boy no more.

I think the more open-minded people we have – like casting directors and producers – the better things are going to be.

In my last year of drama school, I was Abigail in ‘The Crucible’ and Nina in ‘The Seagull,’ and I did some Shakespeare with the RSC. That’s what casting directors saw me in, and I got put up for a lot of period drama auditions. I always get told I suit the costumes. I don’t think I have a very modern-looking face.

If you work in casting, it’s sort of not cool to want to act. A lot of people think that casting directors are frustrated actors, but it wasn’t true with any of the casting people I knew.

Villains are always the best roles, but that meant that for months afterwards, all I got offered were absolute cads and bounders and really nasty pieces of work, as well as a lot of people who only had one arm. Such is the limited imaginative power, you see, of a great many casting directors.

Maybe I’m too masculine. Casting directors cast in their own, or an idealized image. Maybe I don’t look like anybody’s ideal.

I can’t change what casting directors do or what producers do. I can only change what I do.

Casting directors tend to be the unsung heroes in this business.

Casting directors now just see me as the hard-core sniper or prison guard.

My big break was becoming the spokesperson for Texas Instruments. Casting directors really started giving me a chance to read for projects.

When I came out here, my manager thought that casting directors might think I’m a girl, and when I did Threat Matrix, they thought Jamie was a little light.

I love America. I eagerly became a citizen. I have no bitterness toward those casting directors who dismissed me because of my accent, nor toward the producers and directors who wanted to cast me but thought the audience wouldn’t accept my accent. I think they’re selling their audience short.

Casting directors don’t necessarily want a more recognizable commercial face. Sometimes, they want a lesser known person.

A lot of times in Hollywood, when casting directors find out you’re of Middle Eastern descent, they go, ‘Oh, you’re Iranian? Great. Can you say, ‘I will kill you in the name of Allah?” I could say that, but what if I were to say, ‘Hello, I’m your doctor.’

My agent in Sweden used to send off interview tapes but I decided to take it upon myself and come to London to visit casting directors which is when things first started taking off for me. I love Sweden but the industry out here is quite small so when I was given the chance to go internationally I took it.

There are casting directors with lots of imagination, but also some with not as much imagination.

I can remember getting rejected systematically by casting directors as a young kid. I felt like the biggest outsider there ever was; that I’d never belong in that club.

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.

Then there is Abhimanyu Ray, Honey Trehan, Nandini Srikanth, Shanoo Sharma, we have so many great casting directors who have nothing to do with acting. You just need to have a great eye to understand the character.

I think that what ‘Oz’ did is it spawned a great generation of television production. But people know its place in television and just in great dramas. It’s the foundation of my career. Most producers, show runners, directors, and casting directors put me in movies based on my performance in that show.