The Casting Crouch

Here's today's Hollywood advice: if you're thinking about being an actor, don't do it.

Everybody in LA wants to be an actor and has the headshots to prove it.

What the deal was was this: the casting people send out an episode description to agents that gives a basic synopsis of the episode and then a breakdown of the parts they need. For example, "DIANE PATTERSON, 20s-30s, incredibly gorgeous. She works as a spunky intern at a syndication television show and at night fights crime." Except most of the descriptions mentioned spaceships. The agent pulls photos of actors who fit the description and sends them in, usually in legal sized yellow envelopes with the butterfly wings clasp.

I created a pile on the floor for each of the seven roles (actually six, but one role received an even distribution of male and female candidates) and started ripping up envelopes.

Your photo will be thrown away if it's clear you are nowhere near close to the part as described on the synopsis. If the character is described as "20s" and you are obviously on the far side of 30, your photo does not get put in the pile of characters who are in their mid-to-late thirties, it gets thrown away. Tell your agent not to be cute.

For the six/seven roles, I must have ripped open a couple hundred envelopes (and I have the calluses to prove it). Maggie ripped open a couple dozen more (but she was on the phone most of the time). The guys in the Art Department were having a slow day and helped us open a couple hundred. There were about three boxes filled with yellow envelopes. I asked, "Is this a normal haul?" Maggie nodded.

Once we've split up the pictures by role, the main casting people (and Maggie) will go through the two hundred or so and pick out the two dozen people who get called in to do readings -- over the weekend, of course; no one in the Biz has any life. After the readings, six get callbacks to readings for the producers.

I was amazed by how many of the people I recognized -- not just character actors that you've seen a million times, but people who've had their own shows. I was also amazed by how many photos got sent in twice, once by the agent, once by the manager. And I was singularly amazed by how many photos were just awful -- please, I beg you, no matter what your agent says, the photo that makes you look like a leather queen is just silly, okay? And there were a lot of those types of pictures. After a while, I could feel myself getting jaded: "Looks like a dork." "What's this supposed to be? Sexy? I don't think so." "Oh my God, check this out!"

Maggie told me to check out what some of them put down as their interests on the back, but I was going through them so fast I didn't bother.

Today's helpful tip: put your name on the front of your headshot. It's very annoying to have to keep flipping to the back to see if you've got the right one.

Another helpful tip: put a stickie note on the head shot that says which role this actor is applying for. It was intensely annoying to have to keep checking the sheet the agent sent in...if the agent even bothered to mention which role this actor was being offered for.

I really was saddened by the quantity of responses the synopsis brought in. The odds are completely astronomical. And you're being judged on the way you look, well before you're ever brought in for a reading. And what credits you have on the back are important too -- how's that for a Catch-22?

But I guess people do it. Somehow.