Casting Challenges Quotes

I think one of the things when you're casting children is you're also casting their parents.

I was not easy to cast, but also, I have never been typecast.

By the time I was 14, I was about six foot. I remember going into auditions, and they'd look at how tall I was and say, 'Well, you're taller than the lead actor, so there's no way we can cast you.'

Even though the agency kept me pretty busy, I auditioned for every play and film I could find. But they all wanted a black American sound, and I just didn't have it. Finally, I got tired of trotting around and took myself to Paris.

There aren't a lot of movie star males around my age that I can play opposite.

There are too many stars and too few actors.

I don't have the body or the face for romantic comedies, so I've never been offered those. The challenge is that a lot of people see you only as your last character, so you're constantly competing with whatever your last movie was.

Nobody wanted the 'Roseanne' show. I heard from agents that there was no interest in a show about a fat woman and her family.

The western has always been, for me, the bread and butter. It's the easiest place for an identifiable Native American to be able to work. But I do yearn to be known as an actor rather than a 'Native American actor.'

I'm not a big person, so every time they were adding these big guys to the cast, I said to my trainer, 'We're screwed, dude.' I'm only five foot five, and I'm going to look so little.

I think I'm a better director than I ever was an actor. I'd love to go back to acting, but nobody seems to want me.

It sounds so dramatic, but I'll say it: Hollywood just doesn't know what to do with me. And it's not for lack of trying.

Sometimes casting falls in place easily and sometimes it takes a while. Fifty per cent of my job is done when I get the right actors.

I had started acting when I was 7, and I was always wrong. I would always get to the very end [of the audition], but I wasn't a perfect package of one thing. I wasn't a cliche, and it always worked against me. I wasn't pretty enough to play the popular girl, I wasn't mousy enough to be the mousy girl. Then there was a TV show that Toni Collette was starring in. And when a role to play a girl who was struggling with identity came, I thought: "Oh, this is what I was supposed to do. Everything's leading up to this moment." I was 18. I was like, "This is it." I didn't get it. And I was devastated.

I think it's always hard to find great roles, no matter what age you are. So I always say to people, 'You have to remember that Hollywood is in the business of making movies that they can sell tickets to; they're not in the business of finding great roles for actors.'

I think as far as straight actors playing gay roles, "Brokeback Mountain" was a big breakthrough. I'm pretty sure when they were casting that movie that - I think the story is, like you know, 10 to 15 other actors turned it down.

My lowest point came when I shifted to Mumbai in 1993. Nothing was happening. This is right after I did 'Bandit Queen.' I had no way to tell people that I know my job. There was no casting department here. All the commercial films that were happening in those days did not have any place for me.

During my first few weeks in Hollywood, I was told that Jack Warner, the head of the studio, did not believe that a small-breasted woman could become a star.

Finally, 'Vennila Kabadi Kuzhu' happened. The director had doubts if a city-bred, fair-looking boy would fit the role of a village kabbadi player.

Black or white good parts are hard to come by. A good actor with a good opportunity has a shot; without the opportunity it doesn't matter how good you are.

[The Rum Diary] is a prestigious movie and it's got a great, talented cast, so they wanted to make sure they had the right person for the role, but it was a torturous process. It was painful.

I think I was quite difficult to cast when I was in my twenties because I never looked like Cameron Diaz. I'm not talking myself down, but I was never going to be the romantic lead in a Hollywood blockbuster. You need better cheekbones and longer legs.

A lot of the auditions in L.A. do feel like cattle calls, with hundreds of people. I started to lose sight of what I wanted, because you get so desperate for a job that you stop caring whether it's a good script. You're just pleased to be testing for something - but then if you get it, you're doing it for potentially six years, so it's a lottery.

I wrote a pilot for myself. It's about a Latina actress trying to make it in Hollywood. It's pretty funny.

I have the strangest time to get cast in anything. 'Ghost' was the same thing. Six months I had to wait for them to decide they had seen everybody possible. Why not? What limits me? I'm black? Oh, am I black?