1 (from left) Janet Hirshenson and Jane Jenkins
Ready for their close-up
Issue #29
In their book, A Star is Found, two major Hollywood casting directors give an inside perspective at the female-dominated field
By Michael Hastings
Published: September 1st, 2006 | 12:00am
Can you imagine Nicole Kidman in the lead role in Ghost, getting pottery clay all over her hands while a shirtless Patrick Swayze goosed her from behind? Would anyone have bought boy-next-door Topher Grace as the heroic underwater action hero in this summer’s Poseidon? What if Julia Roberts and Matt Damon never got a callback for Mystic Pizza, the little romantic comedy that ended up being each actor’s first “big break?”
Most jobs usually require the most mundane decisions: how to respond to a memo, where to go for lunch, how to calm down irate customers. But a select few in Hollywood are responsible for deciding who our next big movie stars will be. Casting directors pour over headshots, hold marathon auditions, and jet to Paris or London to seek out fresh new talent. It’s not all that glamorous, of course: They also have to deal with finicky directors, prima donna performers, and children who can’t pronounce the word “Pulitzer” correctly.
As Tinseltown tastemakers go, Janet Hirshenson and Jane Jenkins are second to none. Since teaming up in the early 1980s to form their own company, they’ve discovered more fresh faces than Star Search, having cast The DaVinci Code, A Perfect Storm, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and countless other blockbusters and indie flicks. Now the two casting directors have written a book on their adventures in Hollywood, titled A Star Is Found. It’s a dishy, instructional, “this-then-that” look at how Hirshenson and Jenkins have passed judgment on some of the biggest names before they went on to great things. They reveal their not-so-scientific secrets to putting a cast together, and which star actors to match up (Tom Cruise and Demi Moore? Perfect. Kevin Kline and Demi Moore? Not so much).
In the male-centric world of Hollywood, casting is one area where women rule. Among the 700 or so casting directors and associates working in America — whether regionally or in the entertainment nexuses of L.A. and New York — most are women. When you think of casting as a sort of “human resource department for actors,” according to the Casting Society of America, you begin to understand how the job might’ve grown out of traditionally female-staffed positions, and not — like so many other roles in the industry — the other way around. In the old boys’ club of the 1940s, producers and directors were simply too busy to find new talent for their films. Assistants or even secretaries were given a set of criteria and started scouting talent on their own, reporting back to bosses with their finds.
During the ’50s, however, the entertainment industry grew at such a rate — and actors were needed so much more frequently with the advent of weekly television — that these women broke away from their studio paychecks and began performing casting duties on a full-time freelance basis. To this day, women like Hirshenson and Jenkins as well as Mali Finn (8 Mile), Robi Reed (Spike Lee’s early films), and Denise Chamian (Pirates Of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest) continue to make a living by combining industry street-smarts, the savvy interpersonal skills that some Hollywood suites lack, and often one’s own training as a performer.
In A Star Is Found, Hirshenson and Jenkins provide loads of good advice for young actors trying to make it in Tinseltown. Lesson 1: Don’t slap Russell Crowe, as one woman did in her audition for A Beautiful Mind. Lesson 2: “Send a headshot that actually looks like you,” to quote Hirshenson. Lesson 3: Don’t ruin a casting director’s office, like the time The O.C.’s Tate Donovan punched a wall. But if you do happen to get carried away during an audition, remember that flowers and some spackle can always mend your relationship with an understanding director.
Of course, even in the estrogen-fueled world of casting, sexist double standards still exist, and these women have mostly learned to work around them rather than change them. Hirshenson and Jenkins, for instance, bemoan the fact that there are so few female directors in Hollywood. And then there’s the age-old maxim that says you can’t sell a film without an A-list male somewhere in the cast. “Women will go to see a guy movie, but most guys won’t go see a chick flick — and films are budgeted accordingly,” Jenkins writes. It’s a truism that, hopefully, the next generation of prominent female movie industry professionals will work to reverse.
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