Barry Levinson 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.

I always used to say, as a director, that I could make anybody good in a movie if you found the right part. It all comes down to casting.

I would like to see more of the making of just regular television shows. Like the casting process. I think it's so fascinating to watch the actors come in and see how they discuss everybody afterwards. It's a crazy world that has no rhyme or reason.

I don't really have a specific formula I follow to find the right script or role. It's always just very instinctive.

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.

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.

The least consideration of any film I've ever worked on is who is right for it.

You read a script, you try and think through what is the best, most wide-ranging way of telling the story: who stylistically, character-logically, psychologically fits inside the world of what you're trying to do. A lot of it, when you're casting, is trying to get yourself in the head of a director.

Casting is really exciting. With 'Twilight,' I wasn't involved at all with the casting in the original. They kept me in the loop, which was great. They'd be like, 'Hey Kristen Stewart's gonna do it' and I was like, 'Really? Awesome.'

If a script is good, you are 10 steps into the part just reading it. But my choices are not all down to my taste. It is about people you have worked with before.

It's everything and I always make decisions about the cast.

Pretty much everything that I pick, when it comes to choosing roles, is just based on things and materials that grabs me. It's pretty much the subject matter that I gravitate towards.

A film is a chain of very difficult decisions, and I think one of them is to choose an accurate cast.

I think everybody understands the fact that the right person will be cast for the role. So it's not theirs really to lose; they're just trying to find the right person.

As a director, one of my biggest jobs is trying to see what actually works for the actor.

I'm very instinctive when I choose my roles, and usually, the number one thing has to be the director.

For me, casting is very instinctive, and if I don't feel good about it, I just can't go ahead and make the film.

I only cast the actors and actresses I fall in love with - truly having an emotion for them, an anticipation and enthusiasm when seeing them - and I believe that my emotional confidence in them blends into chemistry. It's always been like that, and I hope I won't be wrong in the future.

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've had a couple opportunities where I've been on the other side of the audition process as a director.

Casting is really a black art. It's a huge part of directing and it's the most invisible. It's one that people don't really think about or talk about. But you can really destroy your movie by casting it badly before you've shot a foot of film. And yet there are no guidebooks for it, there's no rule book to tell you how to do it. It's all your own experience and your own sensibility and your own intuition.

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.

I cast very much from the gut, and I think I was very lucky to be able to get... many amazing international... people that I had always really wanted to work with.

Fifty-percent of the director's job honestly is casting the movie well.

For us, performance is everything. If we can get great actors in there who like us, and we really like, we feel pretty confident that we can make a movie work.