Quotes About Casting

The stuff that I got in trouble for, the casting for The Godfather or the flag scene in Patton, was the stuff that was remembered, and was considered the good work.

If you make the right choice in casting, your work is nearly done already. You don't have to spend a lot of time directing the actors, because they're so well suited to the parts.

Casting a film, you can have the greatest actors in a film and it doesn't work. It's a combination of all of the elements.

If you work in casting, it's sort of not cool to want to act. A lot of people think that casting directors are frustrated actors, but it wasn't true with any of the casting people I knew.

George Lucas was casting about and had heard favourable things about my work in Clockwork Orange and asked me to come in, which of course I did even though no one knew what the film was about!

There would always be scripts that came along that I turned down, like Gang Member #5 - roles that were just stereotypes.

For a while, I was feeling like I was always playing characters that weren't specifically Korean or specifically Asian, even - that they were characters who were originally written white, and then they would cast me. And I used to consider that a badge of honor because that meant I had avoided stereotypes.

People obsess about casting and representation, but really, all the real work is behind the camera. Casting an Asian American into a bad role where they're shoehorned into these stereotypes is worse than not having cast them at all.

As soon as you start looking into roles which are specifically Asian, Black, or Latina, you start looking at stereotypes. That's the issue minority actors face - it's not that we don't want to play our ethnicities; it's that, often, the role that's written for our ethnicity is a stereotype.

My casting in 'Halo' produced by Steven Spielberg, which I am doing, is just color-blind casting; Asians have been questioning why best roles should not come to them and I am so happy about this color-blind casting. I am going to be just what I am in that film.

An accent like mine and a face like mine, I think a lot of the time it's easy for casting directors to just stick me in as a bad boy, but 'Being Human' took a risk on me - bless 'em - and I'm not that bad boy no more.

It's a feeling you get. You could have a hundred actors reading for one part, and they could all be spectacular, but one sticks out for some reason.

Acting in itself is changing. This change is because of the advent of the casting director. Earlier, there would be stock characters, who would be seen in every film. Now, casting directors are bringing fresh faces.

Casting is storytelling.

A lot of straight actors are actively searching for gay roles because it is something different to do.

Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, a lot of the roles that I am offered are of Muslim characters, maybe because I looked a certain way in 'Neerja.' But I am actually Parsi.

What's odd is that I've never been asked to do any comedy in film. That's something I could certainly do.

If you're a casting director, you're going to be curious to see what Timothy Spall's son is like. But when you get in the door, you have to have something to offer.

I didn't audition for 'Fargo.' It was a straight offer.

There are a lot of people out there who offer roles to actors because they'll elevate their movie to a place the movie would never reach.

I don't get offered many comedies.

Once you do one bad guy, usually all you get offered is bad guys.

When you're brown and Indian, you get offered a lot of doctor roles.

The way it works in Hollywood is that if you're hot it doesn't matter if you're right for the part or not, you're just offered it.