Last week we had our first casting session for the female leads. We saw a handful of women. One was great, one was good, one was okay, one was not good. All but one looked nothing like her picture. And this was not altogether unexpected. If the internet has taught us anything it's that there are a million ways to make yourself look hot through still photography. Don't get me wrong, each of these women was attractive in person. But they were attractive in different ways than they were attractive in their head shots and press photos. It was bizarre. I could almost understand it if they were completely unattractive and they resorted to funhouse photography to get in the room. Sure we might ask them to leave for fear of shattering the camera lenses, but we'd at least commend them on their ingenuity before doing it. "Bravo, Quasimoto, Bravo! Now get out!" It didn't take long to understand why an otherwise attractive actress might use photos that do not accurately portray her beauty.
For some, it's age. Thirty year old Hot is not the same as 24 year old Hot, and if you are looking to audition for and book younger roles, by god you better have some pictures of yourself looking decidedly younger just to get past the initial cuts and pre-reads. Then maybe...MAYBE...your acting chops might get the director and producers to overlook not being the exact right age. I don't know how often that happens, but when you consider that Shannen Doherty and Gabrielle Carteris were in their 20s and 30s, respectively, during the run of Beverly Hills 90210, I would venture to say it happens often.
For some, it's body. If you are a beautiful girl in your early-to-mid 20s and you have moved past the point in your career where you can, or want to, take roles on Nickelodeon, Disney, and WB, you've got to look like you can do it. You've got to look like an adult. You can have the smokingest body and the prettiest face, but if you are using photos that accurately depict your 5'1", 104lb frame there's not a chance in hell you're getting in the door to play an adult female role with some edge to it. The best way around that is to come in with tight-in, close-up headshots and, again, hope your acting skills can bridge the gap.
For some, it's face. This I understand the most since I am one of the most unphotogenic people I know and I have shlubby, goofball friends who come off like country club brochure models in a posed environment. I have one buddy for whom the disparity between his picture beauty and his real-life beauty is so great, that he takes first dates to the Planetarium so they can sit in the dark staring up at the ceiling and away from his disappointing face. It's similar with some actresses who absolutely pop off the page. And often times it's because the camera likes some particular physical feature that does not necessarily translate in person, face-to-face when you're five feet apart. It can be cheekbones, dimples, the eyes. It doesn't matter. It's something. These actresses, of course, have the most difficult job because their acting abilities not only have to transcend differing expectations, but the natural letdown that comes with not being as traffic-stoppingly beautiful in person as they are in pictures. How fucked up is that?
After we finished the day's auditions we convened, as we usually do, in the larger office space for the actor-by-actor postmortem. Not surprisingly, the girl we all liked the best was the one who looked most like her picture; exceeded it even. I don't know if she'll get the part, as we have many more women to read and you never know what will happen or who will walk through the door, but this woman was a great actress and cute as a button. One of the scenes she did for her audition was an emotional one with some heart and disappointment to it and neither Tucker nor I could look at her as it reached its apex. She hit the emotional points so well, I almost felt bad for writing them.
We had varied, sometimes conflicting opinions about the other women who were reading for a different role. One woman, in particular, I liked but Tucker did not. As we sparred about her, Casting Director chimed in, and I am paraphrasing here: "She is a very good actress, but remember the important thing is how she looks on video and how she comes off on screen." Intellectually, I understood his point. What took me a minute to get instinctively was that Casting Director just told us that neither the photos, nor the in-person performance, nor the combination of the two will be a reliable indicator of how these girls will look on screen. Even past performance doesn't work as an indicator of future performance, because the material they are performing and the people that are directing that performance have changed. All many of these actresses can do is manipulate depictions of their physical appearance in order to meet and exceed certain beauty thresholds that stand as the gatekeepers to these auditions. Once through, they just have to hope their skills and personality overcome or bridge whatever gap may exist between perceived beauty and actual beauty. It's true alchemy for which there is no formula. Well isn't that just fucking dandy?
It's no wonder so many mathematicians go crazy. This kind of constantly shifting multi-variable calculus, at any level, is enough to drive even the sanest man to a shack in the Montana wilderness. At this point I'm convinced Ted Kaczynski wasn't actually disillusioned with the human toll of global industrialization. He was probably just producing an independent film.
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