This week, our anonymous columnist is pulling up his casting couch, cracking open the audition tape and spilling the beans about those awkward Soho meetings...
A lovely older actress was telling me about a recent audition in which the star of the show sat in the corner, looking her over, without throwing her a word. Now, said actress has been at it for a while and everyone knows she can do it and do it well. So she thought twice about her little situation, got up and said, “Well you can take it or leave it, dear, but I’m pissing off to Liberty’s.”
According to her, back in the 60s actors would just get offered parts without even having to read. “Are you free for Rosalind? Yes? Marvellous, darling!”
Well, those were the days; “casting” in its current form is one of the main problems of the profession. There is simply no way to determine the real worth of an actor in an office in Soho, even less on an unfamiliar stage with your head buried in a script you only just received.
Some actors can do it. They are naturally confident, quick and have good technique. But there are a lot of actors who like to brood on a part for weeks before it takes hold of them.
It’s not enough to have learnt the lines - though that is essential. It can take hours of rehearsal, the happy chance of inspiration and some late-night drunken attempts before things click.
I’m not putting down technique, but as my actress friend says, one gets into a part by “osmosis”. Of all the nonsense spoken about method and process this is the most sensible way of putting it. It’s an imaginative process, and it takes time and the right actors around you.
The way ahead seems to be “putting yourself on tape” - making your own audition video at home. Then, at least, you have some control. They say Steven Spielberg only casts by tape, and he should know. We should all start to insist on it and cut out these dreadful meetings for anything but a chat.
When I was very green I went to meet a casting director who’d recently had a baby. We chatted about the little brat that was eyeing me from its crib, forming its second opinion, when the casting director asked why I became an actor. Just as I was trying to find an interesting route into this deadly question, she undid her shirt, popped her right boob out and started breast-feeding. I suppose she knew my answer.
Some casting directors are just plain nasty. And by some I mean S--- F---, who is widely known to be Queen of the Nasties. The last meeting I had with her she told me she hadn’t bothered to watch the recent series I was in, and she was sorry but actually they were looking for someone good-looking for the part.
Other casting directors simply cannot act and yet they insist on reading in with you. It’s almost funny. It has the simultaneous effect of ruining your audition and confirming that not everyone can act, which is strangely comforting.
Now, I’m not a woman. I’m not even a girl, but these days that doesn’t save you from the casting couch. Each theatre has it’s own taste – some go for the triangular university boys with strong jaws, others for sort of rough trade as affirmative action, and some just like them pretty. If you are a boy straight out of RADA you might as well be a sixteen-year-old girl from Nebraska in 1938 stuck in an office with David O Selznick.
Well, why not? Sex is a vital ingredient. I just wish I was their type.
More Actor X
The Rapture
Happy Pills
See all of Actor X’s previous columns.
Image: Adam Kesher by djenvert, available under a CC BY-NC-ND license.