This weekend, I was at a party where a couple of actors were talking about auditioning “to the top of a casting director’s head.” I laughed, because I know exactly what they were talking about. So do you, right?

You walk into a room, ready to do your thing, hoping to connect with the CD and anyone else in the room at the time… and you’re met with the view of the casting director’s crown instead of a pair of intently-interested eyes. Sure, that can be troubling.

But let me take you through to that moment from the casting director’s perspective.

By the time you’ve walked through the door, the casting director has seen dozens of people for the role (or other roles) and most likely has a notepad filled with scribbles about what and who she’s seen so far. She also has a pile of headshots and resumés that actors have brought along with them and she’s probably made notes on those as well. She may even have a copy of the day’s schedule in front of her and need to keep tabs on how behind-schedule they’ve run or which actors have no-showed (and which agents will need to hear about that). If she has other projects casting simultaneously, she may also have notes about those projects and schedules and be juggling calls to make sure that the next day’s meetings get planned in time.

Obviously, none of that has anything to do with you, the actor auditioning at that moment.

Of course, you want the moment you are in the room to be all about you! I mean, you’ve worked hard to get to this moment and you want to be sure that the CD is as into you and your performance as possible. You don’t want her to miss a beat of your subtle choices and great timing!

I get that. I really do. But by the time a CD has worked in this town for even a handful of projects, she’s seen THOUSANDS of actors. She knows what’s working and what’s not. She has seen you walk in the room and has developed an opinion of you before you’ve even opened your mouth. She is looking at your headshot and resumé and making notes about YOU while you are performing. If she is taping your audition, she doesn’t even need to watch you “live,” as she will be heading right back to the tape after that day’s sessions to see how each actor did ON-CAMERA, which is where it may count the most for that particular project.

“I really needed her to give me something!” was the actor’s complaint I heard. No. You walk into that audition ready to show us what you’ve got. Don’t need a dang thing from anyone. If you’ve done your job in prep-work and are ready to nail the read, there is nothing anyone in that room can do to help you do better. All anyone in that room can do is throw you off. And it is in YOUR power to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Don’t let the fact that the reader is male (when the character with whom you’re supposed to be interacting is female), the camera is on your “bad side,” the room is too cold, the session is running late, the sides have been changed, or the top of the CD’s head is all you see affect you at all. Those things truly have nothing to do with you.

“What was she doing with her head buried in those papers?”

That’s none of your business. The casting director doesn’t come to your home while you are prepping for an audition and ask why your process looks the way that it does. Every actor has his own way of becoming ready for a role. Similarly, every casting director has her own way of making notes on what she’s experiencing during the casting session. This is her prep-work for the meeting she’s going to have with the director and producer later that day. Don’t you get caught up in her process and let it throw you off of your game.

Sure, she may be balancing her checkbook or something really disrespectful like that during your audition, but from my experiences, it’s far more likely that she’s making notes about the impression you’re making. If your height and weight aren’t on your resumé (a trend I’m noticing more and more lately), she may be jotting down estimates of both, since she now has you in the room. If you were brought in as a favor to an agent who pitched you and the CD was taking a risk seeing someone she hadn’t prescreened, she may be making a note about how “right-on” the agent was in his description of you (or even noting that she owes that agent a lunch for the string of on-target pitches he’s made to her lately).

The point is that it just doesn’t matter what she’s writing. It’s her process that’s going on there — not yours. Therefore, you shouldn’t give it another moment’s thought. Be glad you’ve learned something about the way that particular CD operates, add that to your running list of casting directors’ quirks or likes/dislikes, vent about it to your cat, but don’t let it impact your process or the way you feel about the job you did.

Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!

Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/000042.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.