Quotes About Casting

I always take kind of a zen view of casting and I really don't remember people who passed. I kind of turn it over to the universe and figure, 'Wow, I guess that wasn't meant to be.' It doesn't sit with me.

As an actor, he should be an extra in police line-ups.

There are certain roles - say, terrorist roles - that if I don't feel like it's something truthful, I'm not going to do it.

I've never been obsessed by how I looked. In fact, I would rather have looked more ordinary so I could play more parts more truthfully.

There's plenty of examples of films where they're greenlit to move forward, and they want to get X actor. And they don't get X actor, so they go with Y, and it doesn't turn out to be as good of a movie as it should have been.

The Russo brothers are the best people ever, and they cast me in 'Happy Endings.' I did text Joe Russo to say, 'I don't think my character dies, so if you need a local news cameraman to show up in 'Captain America 2'... I know it doesn't make sense, but just hear me out on this!' He was really cool about it and turned me down right away.

HBO is turning 'Game Change' into a miniseries, and they've cast Ed Harris as my dad.

Turns out typecasting is a real thing.

Some of the roles that are challenging are more in theater and TV. In movies, there's a tendency to cast actors in roles that have been successful for them. It has to pay for itself.

My first exposure to TV, film, theater, the idea of what acting was, is I was a little kid, and my mom's best friend was a local casting director in Cambridge, Mass. Her name was Patty Collinge.

In films and TV, actors get chosen based on their capabilities, charisma and the image they carry.

My strangest auditioning experience was when I was reading for a TV show, and right when I started the audition, the casting director left the room and yelled at me from the hallway to keep reading.

I know that I'm a quirky guy, to say the least. I don't know how easy I am to cast for a network. It hasn't been because I haven't tried. But am I dying to be on a TV show? No.

I worked with Marlon Wayans on the show 'They Wayans Brothers,' and we hit it off. One thing about Marlon, when he casts a movie or a TV show, he expects you to bring it. You've got to be ready to improv, because Marlon will say anything, and you've got to be ready to come back.

All I ever wanted to do was get a great job on a TV show. When I read 'Modern Family' and started looking at what was available - I obviously couldn't play Gloria; I couldn't play Claire. When I saw the character of Cam, I was like, 'I have to have a shot at this,' because I thought it was a character that would be really fun to play.

I'm lucky because I had blonde hair for a while for this TV show I was doing - they had me dye my hair blonde - and every audition I was going out for was bleach blonde. The mean girl, the pretty girlfriend, and the dumb cheerleader.

I don't know why British actors are getting big parts in American TV shows. Maybe it's because we're cheap.

I never have kids in movies or in TV shows.

It usually starts with the director and any other creatives who may be involved at the start. It's a collaboration. I bring what I have naturally and, hopefully, what they cast me for, and then we start playing and tweaking until we have what they feel's right. It helps to have some artwork to inspire me, but I don't always get that luxury.

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.

It's eighty percent script and twenty percent you get great actors. There's nothing else to it.

People told me I couldn't kill Nicholson, so I cast him in two roles and killed him off twice.

I had great luck with Tim McGraw twice in 'Friday Night Lights' and 'The Kingdom.' I love finding off-beat casting and finding someone you know in one way and you reinvent them in another way. I like doing that as a director.

A lot of people don't want to hire disabled actors. They think you're going to take twice as long over a shot, or they don't want have to put up a ramp for disabled access. They think, 'Why would I do that when I can just hire an able-bodied actor to play the disabled character?'