How to Walk Into an Audition by Casting Director Marci Liroff
How do you feel when you’re walking into the audition room? Are you truly feeling confident? Or do you think it’s like the lottery and hope that they “pick me. Just give me the job!” When you’re coming into an audition you have to ask yourself, “Am I worthy?” If you don’t think you are, then you’re not ready and you’re sending the room that signal.
Casting my latest film, I’m seeing several actors walk into the room in a very tentative way. I can almost see the thought bubble over their head: “I’m never gonna get this. I’m so bad at comedy. All the other girls looked like models.” I can tell that they don’t feel like they should be there and we’re going to discover that they’ve been fooling us all along. They don’t deserve it.
Years ago I was casting a pilot that called for a sexy young woman to work in a men’s high-end shave shop. A funny actor we loved came into the room (which included the creator, producer, writer, and director) and blurted out, “Gosh, I never get these roles. I’m such a tomboy—everybody thinks I have a dick!” A hush fell over the room for a moment and then we all laughed. She then did the scene with our lead actor and was truly funny. After she left, all the people in the room looked at me questioningly, like, ”Does she really have a dick?!” That’s all they could think about. They obsessed about it for the entire session. In her nervousness and self-deprecating humor, she had planted a seed and now they couldn’t see past it because she truly didn’t believe that she deserved to be there. She had successfully shot herself in the foot.
Some say “fake it till you make it.” In her TED Talk, social psychologist Amy Cuddy talks about how body language shapes who you are. She shows how “power posing”—standing in a posture of confidence even when we don’t feel confident—can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain and might even have an impact on our chances for success. In her video, she suggests going into the bathroom before an important meeting and adopting the power pose for a few minutes (think Wonder Woman: hands on hips, legs firmly planted and slightly apart). Hey, even I do it before important meetings with executives. It definitely works!
So much of how you present yourself is in your head. Once the preparation has been done, it’s all about perspective—and this is the good news: You are in control of how you view the audition process. You have the choice of how you’re going to view your audition and how you view it thereafter. Are you going to kick yourself time and time again that you didn’t do what you wanted to do in an audition? Or are you going to learn from it—specifically what went wrong or what sent you off the rails? Are you going to continue to let that voice inside your head tell you you’re no good? Or are you going to master that voice and banish it not only from the room but your head forever?
You have this choice.
Take back that power.
-Known for her work in film and television, producer and casting director Marci Liroff has worked with some of the most successful directors in the world such as Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, Mark Waters, Christopher Nolan, Brad Bird, and Herbert Ross. While working at Fenton-Feinberg Casting, she, along with Mike Fenton, cast such films as “A Christmas Story,” “Poltergeist,” “E.T. – The Extra Terrestrial,” “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” and “Blade Runner.” After establishing her own casting company in 1983, Liroff cast “Footloose,” “St. Elmo’s Fire,” “Pretty in Pink,” “The Iron Giant,” “The Spitfire Grill,” “Untamed Heart,” “Freaky Friday,” “Mean Girls,” “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” “Mr. Popper’s Penguins,” “Vampire Academy,” and the upcoming “The Sublime and Beautiful,” which she produced as well.
Photo Source: Nick Bertozzi