As an actor, when you get the opportunity to audition for a big role, your key goal is to minimize mistakes. You strive to be error-free. You want to be an actor who doesn’t make mistakes.
There is a greater problem in casting. And that is having a session full of actors whose only goal is to deliver a perfect audition. So your main goal is to never miss a line or a pause because you think a pitch-perfect audition will get you the part.
Wrong. A pitch-perfect audition—one where your goal is to deliver a prefabricated, preset-in-concrete sequence of reactions—means you are the same as everyone else.
Because that is the goal of EVERY actor who is auditioning. In 30-plus years of casting, that is what I see time and time again: a concentration on dialogue and delivery accuracy.
Remember, I am seeing a plethora of actors, and all of them are right for the role. Conceivably, all of them can play the role. And they are delivering the same dialogue, one after the other.
Therefore a casting director experiences something like “Groundhog Day.”
It’s like cooking. When you start out, you follow the recipe to the exact ounce—every ingredient. As your confidence grows, you improvise.
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