Quotes About Casting

Practically everything I've been offered didn't require much beyond looking like me.

I can't compete for roles that require me to be Caucasian or African American, even if those characters really connect with me and intrigue me.

I don't mind not looking conventionally - you know, attractive if that's what the part requires.

If I can't cast Amitabh Bachchan because he's over 65, should I cast Abhishek Bachchan instead just because he resembles him and has a similar name?

According to me, when a filmmaker is writing a role, a certain actor comes to his mind. Now whether that actor resides in Mumbai or in the Malabar is hardly of any consequence.

I wasn't, like, pretty enough to be the ingenue; I wasn't 'character' enough to be the goofball sidekick. I'm kind of ethnically ambiguous.

The only thing that's required of an actor for an audition is to memorize your sides with confident choices, and then the rest is not up to you. You're either right for a part or you're not.

I was cast in 'Thor' and I'm cast as a Nordic god. If you know anything about the Nords, they don't look like me but there you go. I think that's a sign of the times for the future. I think we will see multi-level casting. I think we will see that, and I think that's good.

It's amazing that for actors mostly, it's a risk to attach yourself to a film that you don't know whether or not it's going to even be made and if you sign on, in doing so, who else is going to be in the movie with you.

I consciously think about the ethnicity of every character that I create and cast. But one thing that is equally important is quality representation. It's not enough to put an African-American in there, a female in there, a gay character in there: How significant is their contribution? Can they drive the story?

I don't pick my roles by genre; that's kind of silly.

Once people see you pulling off one role, they think you're a safe bet to do a similar role.

In general, the auditions I go up for are very sparse, I guess because of my ethnicity. And the characters are very similar: shy, innocent and naive; the connotations that come from the way that I look.

There's racist casting, and there is normal casting. Normal casting, to me, is a process that strives for representation and, in many cases, strives to simply portray the world as it actually is instead of as falsely non-inclusive. And sadly, sometimes that involves removing the whitewash that exists on history.

To me, the screenplay only becomes the Bible of the film after the actors have been cast. You go over the initial script with them and listen to the way they talk. Then you try to do a rewrite to accommodate them.

It was only after I'd had some injuries that I basically retired from the performing side of show business and then began working in casting. I did that for 19 years or so before a friend of mine decided to cast me as Phyllis Lapin-Vance on 'The Office.'

I've been really lucky when it comes to casting kids, and I don't particularly like child actors. Too often, they just show up, and they've had whatever real innocence that's in a child just beaten out of them. They start to perform for you, and you can just see it coming. It's no good.

I don't get called very often to play innocents.

It helps an actor an awful lot when he looks like the part. There's nothing more disconcerting, that makes you more anxious or more insecure, than when you don't look like who you're supposed to be.

Working on script development, casting, editing, and music is incredibly inspiring to me, and it's wonderful to see something you love come to life.

Maybe I don't have an accurate view of myself. For instance, I keep getting cast as 'The Beautiful Girl,' but I don't happen to think I'm beautiful.

When I am choosing a role, I follow my instinct.

For me, casting is very instinctive, and if I don't feel good about it, I just can't go ahead and make the film.

I'm very instinctive when I choose my roles, and usually, the number one thing has to be the director.