17 On Casting

The most spectacular entrance to a casting session that I ever witnessed was that of a good-looking young man just out of drama school. He burst through the door and came boldly forward, his hand outstretched, a winning smile on his face. But, before he reached us, the casting director asked if he would close the door behind him. His head turned back but his body continued on its forward trajectory — with a resulting spectacular pratfall. He rolled over on the carpet, scrambled to his feet, and looked around as if, for a moment, he did not know where he was. Then he started forward again, his hand outstretched towards me, but just before it met mine, he remembered the door, turned and ran back. As he turned back to face us once more, we all collapsed with laughter. If he could have repeated this on demand, and if we were casting a slapstick comedy, he would certainly have got the part; but I doubted he could, we weren’t, and I don’t remember his name.

Casting sessions are for the actor a test of character, cool, and charisma. They can be seen as a ritual of humiliation and disappointment or they can be seen as an invitation full of promise.  So much hangs on a twist of fate, or a quirk of mis-recognition. Some actors get upset that all their training and hard-won experience can be sidelined by a few minutes superficial chit-chat; but this is to misunderstand the purpose of these sessions. An actor’s technical skills and professional competence must be investigated separately — by watching DVDs, going to live performances, or seeking out recommendations. In some cases there may even be formal auditions or screen tests organised, but that comes later. The initial casting session is about the personality and presence of the actor himself.

One session that stands out in my mind was when I interviewed June Brown, who would, sooner after, go on to world renown as Dot Cotton in East Enders. She burst through the door, dressed to the nines, and carrying a clutch of glossy bags from fashion stores. By-passing the chair in front of the desk she plumped down on a sofa, kicked off her very high-heeled shoes, and curled up with her legs beneath her. As she lit up a cigarette she explained that she had been out shopping with her daughter, having a last fling, because she had seen the writing on the wall and knew her glamour days were over; from now on it was all going to be someone’s aunt or granny or the old spinster next door. I had to tell her that I was not casting any glamorous role. “I know, Darling,” she said and swung

her feet down to face me; “Tell me about it.” And, as I described
the character of a working class woman whose mentally retarded

June Brown in Rules of Justice

son and been falsely convicted of murder, I could see gentle waves of empathy flickering over her face. That she had shown me a flighty side that still hankered after a bit of fun made it all the more poignant. I knew then that she would be terrific in the role.

There are some directors — so I have been told — who go in for bizarre questions or provocative personal enquiries, or off-the-wall improvisations, but, more usually the meetings simply take the form of a job interview. However, it would be a mistake to put too much store by this, because there is rarely a specific competence that is being assessed, and, often, no very clear-cut criteria for the vacancy. Even the one-line description sent out to agents can often appear to be contradicted by the range of actors invited to interview. Many might conclude that the director does not know what he wants, and to a degree this may be true, because, while one might have an image in mind, invariably one sets out in the hope of a marvellous surprise and the original parameters can be overthrown in an instant. Casting is all part of the process of finding out what the piece is really going to be about.

Charles Marowitz outside The Openspace Theatre
Tottenham Court Road, London

I have rather flippantly described a casting session as being more like speed dating than a job interview; Charles Marowitz has given a more precise analogy.

“If auditions are a dilemma for the actor, imagine the situation from a director's standpoint. He is looking at the actor as if through a stereopticon slide--focusing his image of the role and his image of the performer to see if they can blend into one. He has his expectations, his preconceptions. He cannot be objective.”(23)

Nevertheless, the actor should never try to second guess the director. it can be annoying to sense that an actor is putting on a performance, adopting an accent or manner that does not quite fit, in an attempt to present himself as what he imagines the director wants. This can descend to an insulting level when an actor comes dressed for the part. I have had one young man appear in a pristine white suit in the middle of winter; another in a heavy roll neck sweater in the height of summer. Once I rashly told agents that I would hold an open casting for teenage punks. An extraordinary looking assortment of youth filed in wearing bin-liners and clothes held together with safety-pins, tripping over their bondage trousers, and drooling over rings hooked on their lips. As I was talking to one aspirant an electric blue rivulet wound its way out of his quiff and started coursing down his forehead. It reminded me of the blue candle wax dripping onto a plate of cold-cuts in Roger Corman’s

Mask of the Red Death. I was soon to discover that these kids were turning up early with large bags and then trouping into the toilets to change and put on makeup before coming in to see me. Full marks for effort, but as far as far as I was concerned, it was all just a smoke screen.

At a casting session one hopes to meet the actor, himself or herself, and not a projection of what they think you want, or their interpretation of the character. Frequently one just wants to tell young actors to be themselves; but, of course, that would be begging the question.  Mel Churcher has remarked:

“Over the years ... I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon. The interview that happens suddenly so you haven’t time to prepare, the one you're not bothered about, the one where you fall over or your zip breaks - these are the ones you get. Also the times when a steely resolve takes away your nerves and you think, “Right this one is mine.' Whereas the interviews where you try really hard to please and to give them what you think they want, those are often not successful.”(7)

To try too hard is the wrong approach; but to not try at all is even worse. The trick is not to be “outcome dependent”; or, in other words, don’t act as if your life depended on it! And, on the other hand, don’t act as if you are above it all and couldn’t give a shit!  What is required is that state of openness and equanimity that the Chinese call Wu Wei - of being at one with the Tao. 

A more down to earth guideline for the actor, and one that is easier to grasp, is simply to match status — to begin on the equal terms that is the basis of any creative relationship. That is, not to be obsequious to those to those with the power to hire, but not to try to lord it over them either. On occasion some actors may try to give the impression that the part is beneath them, some who try to turn the tables and act as if they are interviewing the director. And, then, there are those who consider themselves to be stars, and demand to be treated as such; who turn up in Saville Row suits and the like, and act as if they have just popped in for a friendly chat as they happened to be passing by.

Miranda Richardson

One young actress who knew just how to handle herself from the start, was Miranda Richardson. She came in to meet me neatly groomed, wearing a svelte trouser-suit. Though, at that time, she had done next to nothing, she already looked like a star, without being at all showy or contrived. I immediately liked her. She was very alive but very much under control. As we chatted I noticed a chunky white plastic watch on her wrist. She pressed it and a little robot figure sprang apart holding the watch face. As she set it on the desk she gave me a sideways look, as if inducting me into some esoteric cult. At that moment I knew she would be perfect for the role I was casting. Unfortunately, I discovered that she had already been put on hold by Mike Newell for the lead part in his movie, Dance with a Stranger;  and as soon as he heard of my interest he firmed up his offer.

Aware of the near-impossibility of foreign actors passing as English, I always tried to avoid the reverse situation. When a part called for another language I did my best to cast a native speaker. A script for Bulman presented me with a number of scenes where Russian characters spoke together. Though this was a prime time show, I insisted that these should be done in Russian with subtitles. In the days before the collapse of the Soviet Union Russian actors were hard to find in the UK. The Czech actor, George Pravda, was an excellent character actor, who had already appeared in the series as a KGB operative with divided loyalties. Previously he had only played in English but he was a fluent Russian speaker. And, as the KGB interrogator I was able to cast Alexei Jawdokimov who had previously played a tiny part for me in The Enigma Files. He was actually part of a Cossack dance troupe but proved himself a useful actor and went on to many subsequent roles. For the lead part of a woman assassin, however, I ran into problems. One day the casting director came up to me with a movie still of a very striking young woman emerging from a pool, her hair plastered to her head. She was Katia Tchenko; of Russian origin but living in Paris. I immediately said that I had to see her.

Katia Tchenko in Sins of Omission (Bulman)

On the day due for our meeting, her flight was delayed and, while we waited, several desperate phone calls were put through to our room, asking if she had yet arrived, and insisting that the moment she did we were to give her a message to ring a certain executive club. When Katia finally arrived, dressed the way all Parisian actresses dress for interview — in high heels, high fashion and sparkling with jewels — we duly passed her the message. She exhaled in exasperation and with a backhand flip and a shake of her head hissed in French, Russian, and, then English, NO. Was it French arrogance or Russian dogmatism? I did not know, but, I knew that it would work for the part. Further she had that distinct, but hard to pin-down, Russian look. 

After the preliminaries she was handed the pages of script which had been translated into Russian, while I spread open my dual language version; but after a few moments rifling through the pages she looked up aghast — What is this? I can’t read this! For my benefit the Russian had been rendered phonetically with the Latin alphabet. Foolishly, we had not comprehended that, for someone speaking French everyday, to then work out the English phonetic transcription and from that guess the Russian word that should be written in Cyrillic script was too much to expect of anyone. She put the pages aside and spoke to us for a few moments in Russian, but, unfortunately there was no-one there who could understand a word she said. Of course, it did not matter a jot that I had not heard her read — she had already demonstrated that she was right for the part.

Readings are like photos  — aids to the director’s imagination and memory. It is perhaps better to read straight off the page than to present an idiosyncratic self-directed interpretation. A reading alone will rarely determine whether an actor is hired or not, but it offers a chance for the director to get a feeling for the actor’s sensibility. Therefore, any personal connections the actor may have with the text, or the subject matter, even if only metaphorical, will be of considerable interest. On the other hand, generalised intellectual discussion is a trap that can lead both actor and director astray. On one occasion I became so engrossed in an argument that I allowed the session to run way over the allotted time-slot with other hopefuls left waiting outside the door. Later I learnt from the actress’s agent that she had left convinced that she had the part and was shattered when I turned her down. She was bright, but intellectual acumen is never proof of an actor’s rightness for the role in question.

An actor can rarely argue their way into a part unless an argumentative quality is just what the role requires. Generally a more subtle approach is needed. The casting interview is normally only ten to fifteen minutes long, and in that time the actor has the task of presenting him/herself as someone who could uniquely fulfil all the requirements of the role on offer. So, the best preparation is simply to imagine oneself in it — what follows from there is then wide open. The crippling problem that often arises for actors is that they become intent on controlling the impression they make which kills all spontaneity. 

In the classic book Impro, Keith Johnstone, calls anything unexpected that occurs to disrupt a routine an offer, which the players in that situation can either accept, or block. 

“I tell my actors never to think up an offer, but instead to assume that one has already been made. Grouch Marx understood this: a contestant at his quiz game froze so he took the man’s pulse and said, “Either this man’s dead or my watch has stopped.”(16)

For June the offer was the couch, for Miranda it was my interest in her watch, for Katia it was an unwanted message and a script she could not read.

A casting session can soon become a routine that repeats over and over. It is up to the actor to bring it to life.

References

7. Churcher, Mel, Acting For Film: truth 24 times a second, Virgin Books, London, 2003

16. Johnstone, Keith, Impro: improvisation and the theatre, Eyre Methuen, London, 1981

23, Marowitz, Charles, Directing The Action: acting and directing in the contemporary theatre, Applause Books, New York, 1991

12 The Actor's ID

“I remember Nic Cage saying to me, when I was in Face/Off with him, 'You know, I mean Alessandro, who do you wanna be man? I mean like, you know, who are you? What's your deal?'  And I was like, 'I don't know what you're talking about, I have no idea, I don't know what I wanna be, I just wanna play a lot of different characters.' And he was like, 'Well, you better figure it out,' and you know I never really did. Some great actors have strong personalities that come through in all of their roles. There's some part of them that you can see in every one of their performances, even though, technically, there's all of this mastery that obscures it.”(29)

Alessandro Nivola

From a glance at his filmography it would appear that Nicholas Cage has played a very wide range of parts — from the ruthless assassin of Face/Off, to the terminal alcoholic of Leaving Las Vegas, to the wild romantic of Moonlighting, to the needy screenwriter of Adaptation, to the drug addled cop of Bad Lieutenant (Port of Call New Orleans), to the investment banker turned hen-pecked husband of The Family Man, and so on and so on. Yet paradoxically there is a very clear image of Nicholas Cage’s personality that comes through, a personality that we all feel that we know. 

The public tend to think of casting as an audition where various actors come in and take a test to see who does best. When it comes to casting for the screen, however, the process is much more like speed dating. It is not a honed performance that you are looking for, but just the opposite. You are trying to get a feel for the actor’s own personality and how it might mesh with the role. It is not even a considered interpretation that you hope for so much as an honesty and openness to how the character may evolve. You may start out with an ideal image in mind, but you are really just waiting for someone to come along with whom you can fall in love — in that role. You are looking for someone who can fire your imagination. 

“It always starts with me. Whatever character I'm playing is me. It's a version of me. Who would I be or what would I sound like if I were this person?“ (29)

Steve Buscemi

Don Henderson in Strangers

An actor who is prepared to invest himself in a role will always trump the skills of a great impersonator. What is required for the screen is more the channelling of feeling than anything that can be admired as a performance. It is the truth of the actor himself, exposed to the imaginary happenstance of the story, that enthrals us

Don Henderson was an actor of limited range, but one who always brought his own character to the part. One day he proudly told me that he held the world record for having played the same character — that of George Bulman — in a single play and then through three completely different TV series, The XYY Man, Strangers, and Bulman, each one having run through several consecutive seasons. Although officially credited to the writer, Kenneth Royce, Don, in effect invented this character to the degree that it became impossible to imagine any other actor playing the part. Over the course of 65 hours of television Bulman gradually became Don’s mirror image. 

Originally intended to have been a bent copper, he came to stand for the very opposite, becoming disillusioned with moral corruption in the police force and retiring to run his own private detective agency as a sideline to repairing clocks. 

Originally, the character was meant to be a pretentious autodidact who spouted garbled quotations much to everyone-else’e merriment; in Don’s hands this become transformed into gnomic epithets delivered with a knowing smile that recalled the mystical utterances of Caine in the TV series Kung Fu.

Originally the character was said to be scruffy, which was unremarkable, except that Don, who was just so in real life — (It was said that he married his second wife, Shirley Stelfox, in a pair of jeans.) — used it as a licence to carefully assemble such telling items of wardrobe as Hush Puppies, a “Will Power” T-shirt bearing a portrait of Shakespeare, Edwardian gold-rimmed half-specs, and a pair of woolly gloves. 

In an episode of Strangers, which I directed, he came up with one of his most memorable scene-stealers — eating a fried-egg sandwich whilst wearing those grimy gloves. Then there was the invention of punctuating plot-laden dialogue by drawing on a nasal inhaler. 

On an episode of Bulman, which I also directed, he came in one day, pleased as punch, because he had come across a supermarket plastic bag with a graphic of The Keystone Cops on the side. From that moment on, Bulman carried the bag (or one similar) in lieu of a briefcase everywhere he went. (It was meant to have his case notes inside; in reality, it normally carried Don’s script.) 

Don’s performance came so much from left field that it was impossible to take a critical stance towards it. You either bought it or you did not. Some viewers just “didn’t get it”, but for others it held a special place in their lives. Anyone who drove through Manchester in a car with Don, as on occasion I did, could have little doubt that he was a star. Everywhere people would wave, and shout out. Of course, it was never the stories from his series, that the punters remembered, but one or other of Don’s little quirks. 

directing Boy Who Won The Pools with 

Michael Waterman, Don Henderson, Gillian Martell

Though Don rarely appeared in comedy as such, I always thought of him as an actor in the tradition of the great silent stars of comedy, like Harold Lloyd. For one of my own rare forays into comedy, The Boy Who Won The Pools, I invited him to play a supporting role. During the shooting of a scene, between Don and Derek Deadman, I ruined a take — for the only time in my life — by bursting out laughing. To get through the whole scene I had to bite hard on my hand. It was only later, at the edit, that I discovered the truth of that old adage of veterans: “If it’s hilarious on set it’s sure to die a death on screen”. 

Don’s character, needed to rub up against a bit of violence and skulduggery for his humanity to shine through. That is why his detective series worked. Shortly before his death he bought the rights to the character of Bulman, and — who knows? — if granted more time, that redoubtable character may well have shown up on TV in yet another series.

References

29. Potter, Sally,  Naked Cinema: Working with Actors, Faber and Faber, London, 2014