#actor-selection

#actor-selection

Rudd pulled me aside and was like, 'Don't do it, man. Don't audition,' Carell said. 'It was like, 'There is no way.''

I started in stand-up because it felt like the most direct way to connect with people. There's no filter. You go on stage, and you find out very quickly if something works. That shaped everything for me. It forced me to be honest. If you're not honest, the audience knows. That idea still drives how I work today.

Here, a central character hides behind so many layers of deceit, he almost believes his own version of the truth while his wife refuses to believe their son died in the war. The pitfalls of capitalism and the hollowness of the American Dream certainly resonate today as they did after World War II.

"[Bias] is that thing that stops you being regarded as a person and makes you something smaller. With my accent, I've had that experience where I'm suddenly no longer a person with infinite possibilities and potential - I am 'that Scottish person'. I'm reduced to a noise that comes out of my mouth."

John Slattery, 63, moved to an apartment on Bank Street in the West Village after marrying the actress Talia Balsam in 1998. At the time, he had established himself as a character actor.

Brooks Ginnan, in addition to being a model, is a 29-year-old non-binary musician and actor. They have a rare physical condition called ectodermal dysplasia (ED), a genetic condition that affects the development of hair, teeth, nails, and skin. This genetic disorder gives Ginnan a distinctive physical appearance that has attracted the attention of designers, photographers, filmmakers, and musicians.

Readers who saw my previous post will recall its focus on a recurring pattern of laughter and humor found during my deep dive into the humor of the Seinfeld series. I wondered why we tend to laugh at various things going into our bodies and tried to explain why we might be so inclined using the Mutual Vulnerability Theory of Laughter.

He had already picked on me several times for laughing too loud, too readily (that wasn't even a joke, he chastised me at one point). I was trying hard to suppress my laughter to hold it in, to hold it back, to not fully express the joy I was feeling. I was being somewhat successful. And then I wasn't. Everyone in the audience was laughing but I was laughing too much.

Unfortunately, Matt's love of film is inconsistent with his real assignment, which is to make the most money possible while taking the fewest risks. And he believes in that, too, because he wants to keep his job and he loves the life it gives him. So in this world, the desire to make art and the desire to make money are in tension, but not because they put pure artists and mercenary suits on opposite sides. They are competing desires that exist inside the hearts and minds of many, if not most, of the people in the industry, just in different proportions.

[The scene is] a lot calmer in the movie than my audition was," she told the Los Angeles Times in November 2025. "But I was so happy that I got a self-tape versus an in-person thing. You can make it entirely your own - you can really make it look like how you feel like it would look. If you want somebody to pay attention to your tape, make sure that you stand out and take a risk.

Casting as an artistic discipline has been around in its current form for decades, despite the proliferation of Zoom and self-tapes. Meticulous research, intuition, collaboration, and creative ability to expand on the filmmakers' vision all go into the casting process. We see no reason IndieWire can't retroactively reward that effort - albeit with no statues or acceptance speeches, unfortunately - to build a sense of what could have been a list of the Best Casting Award Winners for the first quarter of the 21st Century.