NYC: Open Casting Call for the Upcoming Broadway Show, ‘Matilda The Musical’

Matilda the Musical will be holding an open call for the role of ‘Matilda’ in New York City on Sunday, September 30^th at Pearl Studios (519 Eighth Avenue, 12^th Floor, between 35^th and 36^th streets). 

Check-in begins at 10:00 AM in Studio C on a first come / first serve basis.  Auditions will begin at 11:00 AM.

Producers are seeking 8-10 year old girls who are 4’4 or under. Matilda should be a strong singer and confident speaker with a good understanding of text and intelligent approach to acting. She should look like the runt of the litter. However, she is extremely bright, fearless and focused, and able to speak assertively. Read more

Jonathan Groff talks ‘Boss’, ‘Red’ and working with actors “who are better than you”

Can an actor be too gay?  Jonathan Groff courted a little controversy in the past regarding that question.

A Newsweek critic a few years ago deemed the actor too gay to be a convincing straight leading man.  “I feel the same away now as I did then,” he said in an interview with The Los Angeles Times.  “Here’s the deal—I go to my auditions and plug away and try and do my best.  People are going to say whatever they’re going to say about your performance, and at the end of the day, you can’t let that stuff affect you.  Everyone is entitled to his opinion, and it started a lot of good conversations probably.  All I can do is laugh and keep moving forward.  Sexuality is such an interesting thing.  Unless you’re playing a very effeminate person, a stereotypical queen, it’s hard to say what it means to play gay.”

The Tony-nominated actor is getting to show off his acting chops in a Los Angeles production of Red and on Starz’s series Boss.  Groff feels “that the best way to learn is to work with people who are better than you.” Read more

Kevin Spacey Talks About Learning From The Best – Jack Lemmon, Joseph Papp & Mike Nichols

After learning from the best as a young actor – Jack Lemmon, Joseph Papp, Mike Nichols - Kevin Spacey is ready to give back. 

He’s developed a new competition called Jameson First Shot that will help upcoming filmmakers.  As he continues to support new talent, Spacey talked to VanityFair.com about the help he got from more experienced vets when he entered the acting community.

Spacey is open about the aid he got when he was starting out.  He said, “I wouldn’t have a career if it weren’t for first-time directors, first-time producers, first-time writers taking a chance on me.  I can pinpoint through my life the key individuals that spotted me, saw me, believed in my talent, encouraged me, nurtured me, took me under their wing, whether it was Jack Lemmon when I was 13 years old at a workshop with my drama class, or Joe Papp for whom I did my very first job in New York in Shakespeare in the Park playing a tavern person and then a guard and then a messenger—I had five lines in Henry IV, Part I, it was very exciting—or Al Pakula or Mike Nichols who were two film directors who stood up and fought for me and gave me roles very, very early on.” Read more

Michael Fassbender on Early Auditions, Directors and Acting: “I take my work seriously but I can’t take myself too seriously”

Michael Fassbender is an actor who most people weren’t aware of in 2010, but by the end of 2011 his name and his naked body were the talk of the town.  

In a revealing interview with GQ, Fassbender talks about his early experiences breaking into acting and how he has coped with his fame post-Shame.

Fassbender explains that he more-or-less fell into acting while he was looking for a way to express himself.  He says, “As a teenager, you’re searching for something that fits for you. I was pretty average at most things. I was just looking for something that I could relate to and perhaps excel in myself.”

His professional career started with a number of lows.  After being cast in the HBO World War II mini-series Band of Brothers, the film shoot lasted for nine months.  Those nine months, however, did not amount to much screen time for Fassbender, who says,”Blink and you’ll miss me.” 

He lived in Los Angeles during the following months and struggled in his auditions.  He says, “I wasn’t blowing them away in the audition room, that’s for sure.  I just didn’t feel settled or comfortable or confident.” Read more

Why I Said “No” To A Certain Audition and Why I Think You Should Too

Last week, my agent (who I love) sent me an email for an upcoming audition. Like you, I love getting those C-Mail notifications and immediately opened it.

It was for a film that’s to be shot under the SAG-AFTRA New Media Ultra-Low Budget rules. Which means no pay. I have my own thoughts about actors not getting paid for their work but regardless of my feelings on that, I was still going to audition. The more you audition, the better you’ll be.

I read a bit further.

This is going to be the “FIRST EVER live-streamed, crowd-sourced feature film!,” it said. Read more

‘Girls’ Star Allison Williams on Her First L.A. Audition. Which was ‘Girls’

Girls actress Allison Williams, who plays Marnie on the Judd Apatow freshman HBO series, tells Elle that she scored the role in what was her first audition in LA.

“When I graduated from college in early 2010, I decided that I needed to create a calling card, some kind of business card that people can link to my name and face. So I did this “Mad Men Theme Song…With a Twist” music video,” she said. “I released it just as I moved to LA, and my agents got a call from Judd Apatow saying, ‘We want to make sure Allison auditions for this new show we’re doing with Lena Dunham. Please send her Tiny Furniture and the pilot and see if she’s interested.’ It was so crazy that he saw that video and somehow saw Marnie in me. So I watched Tiny Furniture and was just in awe. Then I read the pilot and it was love at first read.” Read more

In order to succeed you must BE. DO. HAVE.

Written by Jamison Haase, L.A. On-Camera Training Center

Most actors start at the end.

Most actors after having moved to Los Angeles right away set about trying to find an agent. They think to themselves, “I need an agent in order to get auditions so that can be the TV/Film actor/star that I want to be.”

They struggle to find an agent, or on the very outside chance find someone, but still rarely get auditions, let alone callbacks and bookings. Over time, they grow more and more frustrated, and shed more and more tears not realizing that they were doomed from the start.

Ultimately, they were really saying, “Once I have the career I want, THEN I’ll start working hard, and THEN I’ll be the person I want to be.” You don’t have to be caught in that cycle. I know, because I was thinking that way when I first started; spending five years of my life not understanding the key to real success. 

One simple phrase, “Be, do, have.” Read more

Melanie Lynskey on Building Her Acting Career and Gaining Confidence in Her Ability

Melanie Lynskey, despite being best known at the moment for her role on TV’s Two and a Half Men, has amassed an impressive list of acting credits since first appearing in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures at 16.  She also has appeared in the Oscar-nominated Flags of Out Fathers and Up in the Air and independent films like Win Win and Hello, I Must Be Going, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.  Lynskey talks about how she built her career to Interview Magazine.

While Lynskey had the ambition to be an actor and admits it wasn’t difficult getting his first role in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, she does explain that it was difficult landing future roles, saying, “I always wanted to be an actor, but I had this whole plan to go to a good drama school and do it that way. I wasn’t trying to get into movies; someone came to my high school and auditioned some girls, so it was a complete accident.  I lived in a pretty small, provincial town in New Zealand; there weren’t agents or anything like that, so I just had no way of going about it. I just thought ‘All right, I’ll carry on with that plan that I had to go to drama school.’  So yeah, there was a good straight year where I wasn’t working as an actor but it didn’t seem like such a crazy thing, I didn’t really have a fear of not being able to make it happen, because it seemed so impossible anyway.”  Read more

Kal Penn on Why He Changed His Name: “Half of it was curiosity to see if it would make a difference”

In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Harold & Kumar star Kal Penn explained the origin of his stage name and how it’s gotten him more auditions than his given name ever did.

The actor was born Kalpen Suresh Modi and changed his stage moniker after moving to California from New Jersey for college.

“Half of it was curiosity to see if it would make a difference, and the other half was as a joke to friends of mine. We read something that said that 40 percent of actors have screen names, and we were sitting at this place called Jose Bernsteins… and they were just berating me with things like, ‘What about ‘Kal Pucino?’” he recalled. “I was rejecting all of their awful suggestions, and thought, everyone calls me Kal anyway. My first name is Kalpen, so it’s sort of how Joseph becomes Joe… And it did increase auditions.”

“To this day, I’ve never been completely sure whether it was [because it was] less ethnic sounding or just [because it was] monosyllabic and that was easier.”  Read more

4 Ways to Increase Your Auditions With or Without Representation

Written by Dallas Travers, CEC

Track One: Casting Directors

Casting Directors are the most obvious route to securing more auditions.  They’re definitely not the only route, but it is a good place to start.

Here’s a simple strategy outlining how you can become known by casting directors by utilizing workshops.  I’m going to use the umbrella term of “workshop” to define classes, intensives, and seminars.

Step One: Create your target list.  There are literally hundreds of casting directors in the business, so it’s pretty impossible to effectively apply the Rule of Seven to all of them.  Not to worry – you don’t have to.  Just select a small (less than 12) list of casting directors and target them specifically and consistently.

Step Two: Register for 3-4 different CD workshop studios if you can.  Now, remember, not all studios are created equal. I recommend that you join a service that truly auditions their talent before accepting an actor.  This insures that the caliber of talent is consistent and sets you up to really shine.

Step Three: Only workshop with those casting offices on your target list.  This will allow you to maintain your sanity and your budget by attending a limited number of workshops with a purpose rather than taking a shot in the dark and workshopping with various CDs through a process of random selection.  Read more

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