Opinion: What Casting Really Needs

"Casting directors need actors who do not look like actors." - Major CD

In my opinion, there are far too many aspiring actors—typically college graduates with a theatre degree—who show up in Los Angeles presenting as average, well-adjusted kids who grew up in a "Norman Rockwell" home.

This opinion is largely shared by most competent talent agents and managers in the Los Angeles and New York markets. I've met actresses from the UK who spent six or more years in London and faced similar "feedback."

Including vocational training programs (two-year Meisner conservatories, etc.), it's not overstating the facts to say there are 1,000 acting schools in the United States. If even one male and one female student from each school moved to Los Angeles (or New York) each year, that's 2,000 new faces arriving annually with the same look, the same lack of credits, and the same ill-advised notions about how casting works.

To be sure, there are jobs for entry-level actors in every category. But if we were to quantify the number of entry-level TV roles written for newcomers with a non-descript presentation, it would not be significantly more or less than 10-30 (on average) a week in each age range (strata). And those characters would be partitioned among various diversity categories.

Given that actors play a range of ages, over a six-year moving window, we can extrapolate that "2,000 graduates" per year to a pool of 12,000 newcomers. All of them lack experience, all "have the same look," and all are aspiring to be cast in a very small quantity of available roles.

So, twelve thousand newcomers with non-descript, suburban, middle-American looks all competing for, let's say, 20 available roles per week.

And we have to remember another population: actors who didn't go to college and who arrived earlier, at 15 or 18. They also have the non-descript "average American" look but hold the significant advantage of "starting earlier," reading "younger" (where there's less competition), and so forth.

With respect to the available roles in the "generic category," we can expect the majority to go to the more experienced actors who arrived in Hollywood early or who started gaining TV and film experience in a local market (Atlanta, New Mexico, etc.) before they enrolled in college.

So, we must be realistic about how many of the "20 roles" per week that describe "average Americans" are realistically captured by novices arriving at age 22-24.

It can take time to get good representation, adding an 18-36 month delay to "getting started"—which only makes matters worse. A new actor might sign with an agent who isn't effective at getting appointments for them. It could take several years to realize this, further delaying any chance of momentum.

The fact is, casting offices in the major centers "don't really need" more choices for non-descript "average American actors." Agents know this and avoid bringing on talent in this saturated category.

Which brings us to the rhetorical question: "What do major casting offices need?"

To answer this, I'll refer to a direct quote from a major casting director: "Casting directors need actors who do not look like actors."

This is a strange statement, almost a Zen koan.

Since actors come in all shapes and sizes, I assert that "look like actors" refers to the massively saturated group of non-specific, average American college graduates—the ones with pedantic headshots and "well-adjusted suburban" looks who migrate to New York and Los Angeles each year. Under the 80/20 rule, we might say 80% of all inexperienced actors arriving each year fall into this category.

Crime procedurals are a prime source of casting opportunities, given that the "guest cast" for each episode is entirely new, as each storyline stands on its own. (Certainly, there are story arcs that involve recurring roles, typically relationship roles with the Series Regulars.)

Crime procedurals necessarily involve criminal storylines. We can reduce this to the simple game of "COPS & ROBBERS." The Series Regulars are generally the "good" cops (lawyers, judges, detectives), and the heavily recurring cast populates their world (bailiffs, court clerks, street cops, forensics).

It is the guest cast that will be dominated by the criminal element, including criminal types and those who populate their world. The seedy underbelly of society. There might be some innocent victims who fall into the "non-descript, average American" category, as well as some "wolf in sheep's clothing" criminals.

But for the most part, the guest cast demands "actors who look like criminals." Or, to state it again in the words of the casting director, "actors who do not look like actors."

We can unpack this by looking at character archetypes:

• Casting doesn't need actual murderers; they need "actors who look like serial killers."
• Casting doesn't need actual drug addicts; they need "actors who look like drug addicts."
• Casting doesn't need actual rapists and drug dealers; they need "actors who look like rapists and drug dealers."

"In Hollywood, you need A NAME or A LOOK." - Talent Manager

Crime procedurals are one of the main engines driving casting and launching careers. So if an actor happens to be one of the majority of non-descript, well-adjusted Americans, it will benefit them to undergo a voluntary stylistic makeover with the goal of meeting the "actual needs of casting."

Because what we find is that actors who actually look the part of a drug addict (unusually skinny, gaunt, etc.) tend to find work quite easily. And actors covered in tattoos that "mom would not approve of" tend to find work as criminals quite easily.

It's not that "average" actors are never cast. Rather, the few roles that are available are statistically distributed among the massive population of available actors. This is why you see so many women, age 29-33, with a single co-star credit after 10 years in Los Angeles. Their "slice" of the pie is incredibly small relative to their population.

Suffice it to say, this is a terrible career strategy ("not having a look" or "looking like an average American"). In fact, it's not a strategy at all. It's an ill-informed, naive "lack of strategy" that arises from having no insight into what is actually going on inside agencies and casting offices.

I've even met "average" actor types who interned at agencies—where they were unable to "get themselves auditions" (i.e., by doing self-submits from the agency desk)—who still continue to try and make this untenable situation work.

For a great majority of Americans pursuing fields other than acting, "having a look" for the tribe associated with the domain is de rigueur. For example, in the VFX business, there is a vast army of Maya artists animating and compositing shots for feature films. In movies like Guardians of theGalaxy and Avatar, the end credits include thousands of names (a considerably larger number of artists than the on-camera cast).

If you were to peek in on some of these artists, many of whom attended art schools like Cal Arts or Emily Carr, I think you would find a lot of purple hair, piercings, tattoos, and side-shaves. For them, having a look is part of their lifestyle.

In the opening scenes of the Will Trent pilot, the titular character is at an animal shelter trying to find a home for a stray dog (later named Betty).

In the mind of casting, "What does the front desk clerk at an animal shelter look like?" The answer, in their mind, is "hipster with blue hair."

So we might say, "casting is looking for actors who look like VFX artists."

Might be time for a makeover. My advice: don't try to "look good." A deranged or sociopathic look will probably lead to a better agent and a real career. YMMV.