You’ve undoubtedly heard of the job “casting director,” but unless you’ve worked in the niche industry of casting, you probably have only a vague idea of what a casting director actually does. When I first moved to LA after working in production in Chicago, I had no idea this industry existed. I never really gave much thought to where the actors who showed up on set came from and had no idea there was an entire process to finding the right actor for a specific role. I imagined a hard-boiled, fast-talking producer called up some gravelly-voiced agent (on his old-timey rotary phone of course) and bellowed, “I need two of your best actors at the studio, toot sweet!"

On the most basic level a casting director is a person responsible for finding the people who will appear in some sort of produced content. The content can be created for film, TV, the internet, social media, video games, or industrial use, which covers anywhere else media can be viewed, such as kiosks at the grocery store or the Jumbotron at a sporting event. The type of content can range from narrative projects, like TV shows and movies, to commercials, reality TV, webisodes, testimonials, or even documentaries, which often incorporate reenactments of real events.   

A casting director’s job is to collaborate with the creative team to present them with choices of the most promising talent (i.e., actors) for a given role. (I’ll use the term “creative team” to refer to anyone involved in the creative decision-making process, which can include the director, ad agency creatives, the producer, executive producer, showrunner, or brand representatives, depending on what type of content is being produced.) In other words, casting can be a massive undertaking of filtering out everyone who is not right for a role until you find the one person who is. I like to think of the process like Michelangelo’s famous quote about how he “simply carved away everything that was not David” to create the masterful sculpture. Depending on how broad the search is for a role, thousands of actors may be submitted. Of course, there’s no way to allow that many people to audition for a role, so it’s up to the casting director to decide which ones are the best suited to get the opportunity. There are several criteria that weigh into this decision, including an actor’s look, which is judged by their headshot; the actor’s level of experience, reflected by the credits and training listed on the actor’s resume; and an actor’s reel, which showcases clips of past work. We’ll take a closer look at each of these important features of an actor’s profile in future posts.

In addition to weeding through and narrowing down the submitted talent pool, a casting director will actively brainstorm casting ideas and make lists of actors who may not have been submitted but would be right for the role. These are often actors the casting director has booked on previous projects, or in some cases, the actor has auditioned for the casting director before and performed well enough in the audition that the casting director wants to give them another shot.

Once a casting director has narrowed down the talent pool to the relatively small number of actors who will have the opportunity to audition, the casting director invites the actors to audition in one of three ways: an in-person audition at a casting studio, a virtual audition on Zoom or a similar platform, or a “self-tape” or self-recorded audition. The type of audition weighs into the formula for how many actors can be seen for a given role. Because in-person and virtual auditions are limited by time during the day of auditions, the number of actors a casting director can call in is smaller than the number of actors that can be seen for self-recorded auditions, which are limited by the number of auditions a casting director can review for quality control during the day. The casting director then arranges the auditions on a link to send to the creative team at the end of the casting day.

After the initial round of casting, there may be additional rounds of casting based on feedback from the creative team. After each round of casting, the creative team gives the casting director their list of selects, or the shortlist of actors they liked. The selects give a casting director a better understanding of what kinds of actors and performances resonated with the creative team. The casting director then uses this information as a guide to help them decide which actors might be suitable to call in to audition in subsequent rounds. Once the creative team is satisfied, or the money in the budget for the initial rounds of casting has been expended, the team is ready to move forward with the next step in the process – the callback.

A callback is another round of auditions where the creative team can be present, real or virtually, to interact with the actors. While not all projects have callbacks, and some end up booking talent based on the initial audition performances, the primary advantage of having a callback is that the creative team can interact directly with the talent in the auditions to fine-tune their performance to align with the overall creative vision.

At the end of the callback the casting director guides the creative team through the review process. They take another look at the recorded auditions of the talent who seemed the most promising for each role and discuss the nuances of different performances they saw throughout the day. Although there are often many voices in the room with different opinions, everyone must ultimately agree who to present to the client as their top choices for each role. (The “client” is the person or group who have the final say about who gets cast. They are usually the representatives of those paying for the project, so they get the final word on how their money is spent. In a commercial, it is usually a rep of the brand, like McDonald’s or Honda, and on a TV show it might be the showrunner or executive producer, who may not be directly involved in the casting process until the end.) Anyone who has served on jury duty has a general sense of how this part of the process can run. As jury foreman, the casting director tries to keep the discussion productive, constructive, and as efficient as possible, without inhibiting the creative process. The shortlist of the top few actors is then edited onto a new link, usually labeling each as a “First Choice,” “Backup,” or some similar designation to assign order of preference. This edit is then sent to the client for final approval.

After the client weighs in with their feedback, either approving the creative team’s first choices or opting for one of the backups for various reasons, the casting director is given the green light to move forward and book the talent for the job. (There are certain instances in which the client rejects everyone presented, and then it’s kind of a back-to-the-drawing-board scenario which I’ll save for a later post.)

A common misconception about casting directors is that we make the final decision about who is cast in a particular role. While our input is valued (with varying degrees) by the creative team, you can see from the process outlined here that a casting director is one of many people who have a part in deciding what actors are chosen for the final cast. Casting directors are often equated to gatekeepers. We may not get to decide who ultimately gets cast in a role, but by narrowing down the talent pool and guiding the creative team through every step of the casting process, we can certainly decide who are the best candidates to present to the final decision-makers. While the responsibility of weeding through thousands of submissions to find the one person who is the best for a role can seem overwhelming, it can be extremely rewarding to book an actor and give them a job, which can often lead to more work and a promising career.

Want to know the difference between a casting director and a casting agent? Check the next post to find out.