Similarly, there is no one way for actors to find
out about parts that they may want to play. Produc-
ers, directors, screenwriters, or casting directors
may alert agents or contact actors directly. Audi-
tion calls may be published in trade papers such as
Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Back Stage,
or word may spread through networks of movie
professionals.
Regardless of actors’ experience, they may be
asked to read for parts, either alone or with other
actors, or to take screen tests(trial filmings). If
they are chosen for the part, negotiations will, in
most cases, be handled by their agents, but if they
belong to one of the actors’ unions—the Screen
Actors Guild (SAG) or the American Federation of
Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA)—the condi-
tions of their participation will be governed by
union contract.
New approaches to casting are helping to foster
the growth of today’s independent filmmaking. For
example, casting leading actors in major roles
focuses the attention of distributors and audiences
alike on movies that they may otherwise overlook.
Laura Linney (who earned an Oscar nomination for
her work) and Philip Seymour Hoffman brought
prestige to Tamara Jenkins’s The Savages(2007), as
did Robert Downey, Jr., and Dianne Wiest to Dito
Montiel’s A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints(2006).
Woody Allen and his casting director routinely
pack his small movies with rosters of stars. Allen
has a huge following among sophisticated urban
audiences, but it’s hard to imagine that general audi-
ences would flock to his Vicky Cristina Barcelona
(2008) if its cast had not included Javier Bardem,
Scarlett Johansson, and Penélope Cruz.
Factors Involved in Casting
The art of casting actors takes many factors
into account. In theory, the most important con-
siderations are the type of role and how an
actor’s strengths and weaknesses relate to it. In
reality, casting—like every other aspect of movie
production—depends, in one way or another, on
the budget and expected revenues. Here, gender,
race, ethnicity, and age also come into play. The
American film industry has tended to produce
films with strong, white, male leads. In the 2008
Harris Poll cited above, six of the ten actors fit this
description, and two are African Americans. Other
significant changes are affecting the evolution of
male casting. Between the 1930s and the 1990s,
the typical American leading man was often a
strong, square-jawed actor with an attractive
physique (Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper,
Steve McQueen, Sean Connery, Robert Redford,
and Russell Crowe, for example). Today, however,
many leading men are younger and have softer
faces and wiry bodies (Tobey Maguire, Orlando
Bloom, Jake Gyllenhaal, Leonardo DiCaprio).^26
It is also true, however, that today gender, race,
ethnicity, and age have become important issues in
the movies, as in other areas of American popular
culture. Both the characters depicted on the screen
and the actors playing them have grown more
diverse, particularly in terms of race and ethnicity,
and this diversification has, in turn, changed the
people who make movies, the audiences for movies,
and the financing that makes them possible.
Twenty years ago, to see a movie about African
Americans meant waiting for the next Spike Lee
release, and anyone wanting to see a mainstream
movie about Hispanic, Latino, or Asian Americans
was generally out of luck. By contrast, now every
week—depending, of course, on the distribution
of movies in a particular part of the country—
audiences can choose from a range of movies that
reflect contemporary North America’s social diver-
sity in the stories they tell and the filmmakers and
actors who made them. Here, the industry has
learned that significant profits can be gained by
targeting film releases to different demographics.
For decades, movie producers intentionally con-
tradicted social reality by casting actors who are
not of a certain race or ethnicity to portray that
race or ethnicity: Richard Barthelmess as Cheng
Huan in D. W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms (1919;
see “D. W. Griffith and Lillian Gish,” earlier in
this chapter), Luise Rainer as O–Lan in Sidney
Franklin’s The Good Earth(1937), Marlon Brando as(^26) See Sharon Waxman, “Hollywood’s He-Men Are Bumped by
Sensitive Guys; Six-Pack Abs Not Required for New
Masculine Ideal,” New York Times(July 1, 2004), sect. E, p. 1, 5.
CASTING ACTORS 311