Gurinder Chadha Quotes

As a director, it became important to hear that specific role read by that specific actor, and you hear the chemistry, or you don't hear the chemistry. So I'm not so bothered by the audition process anymore; in fact, I use it. It's a time for the actor to actually get to the know the director and the producers a little bit, too.

If a director can't figure out what they might get from me or whether he or she wants to work with me based on what I've done, then I can't tell them anything more than what they don't know already.

When I was in casting, we would bring somebody in, have them read their lines, maybe give them a few pointers, and hire them, and then once they go to the set and you have a director who's directing them, that performance may not be anywhere near what you had in the audition, either good or bad.

I worked in casting for about five years before I became a director, and that taught me a huge amount because you never actually will see the character walk through the door - and if you do, then you have to be slightly suspicious of that.

A bad audition is usually the director's fault, not the actor's. It's up to the director to get the atmosphere right to get the best out of your auditionees.

I'd make a terrible casting director.

I'm not always right for the role. And to be honest I think part of your job as an actor is knowing when you're not right for the role.

I treat auditions like I treated my first dates. It's an opportunity to get to know a stranger and to learn from each other.

The cold-audition process is not a science, so I ignore that.

I started taping my dad's auditions when I was 11, when he was auditioning actors for one of his movies. I would see, over and over again, that there wasn't just one actor for the role. It was really clear that there were a lot of people who could play a character really well, and it would always come down to something kind of weird and non-obvious as to why a person was cast. If you're not right, you're not right, but that's okay.

Hollywood is so strange because a lot of times the battlefield is just a meeting. It's not necessarily like an audition. They've seen clips of you and they know that you can perform and it's a matter of "what is your take on a character"?

It's for people to judge if my acting is good or bad.

Even when they have a star that they're going after, casting directors love, if anything, just the excuse to see people. They like to have a dugout full of actors that they can go to.

I did 'Daddy' when I was 17 years old. My father, Mahesh Bhatt, directed the movie, and he cast me.

When I cast someone in a movie, I have to absolutely trust who they are as a human being. Trust is the intangible of moviemaking.

I can only get to a certain point as I write and then I have individual conversations with everyone that I cast. I always do a rewrite based on the conversations.

I've seen many shows ruined by bad reviews and good reviews, so I always tell my actors not to read the reviews until after the run is over.

I always believe an actor is as good as the content as he gets or chooses.

The only question we should ask is, 'Are they good?' I've met great actors, black and white, and I've met bad actors, black and white.

You have actors you've worked with previously, and you have actors you haven't worked with that you've seen in things where you know they can work in these parts. And then there are actors who blow you away, who surprise you.

You haven't been on tape, nobody sees what you can do, nobody sees how you play, so they don't have anything to watch.

Sometimes casting falls in place easily and sometimes it takes a while. Fifty per cent of my job is done when I get the right actors.

Any script, even like The Founder, if it's something that I imagine myself playing this character or that character - any of the characters, basically - how do we flesh these characters out to be good enough to have amazing actors that come in that make it really difficult for them to say no? Even though I'm not right for any of those parts, that's just kind of how we go about it.

In the film industry you never really know if all the various ingredients will come together - sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. As an actor, you don't have much control over those things. It's a director's medium in that sense. All you can really do is minimise the risks of being involved in something that might not work and look for something that also suits you.

When I auditioned with Anthony Minghella (The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency), I loved the audition process, although I hated him for it. Because he had me audition six times for that role. Maybe three hours each. He wanted to see how quickly I could vary.