April 2012
2 posts
Private Coaching
NAIL YOUR NEXT AUDITION! DON’T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES OVER AND OVER AGAIN!
1 hour of DAY OF or DAY BEFORE coaching (both on or off camera)
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: info@toddthaler.com
Bio & Credits →
Todd Thaler’s credits as a Casting Director date back to 1986, but he started as a “P.A.” for Jack Rollins & Charles H. Joffe Productions, Woody Allen’s Personal Managers and Producers. Soon after, he was assigned the position of “extras” casting, which he did on 14 of Mr. Allen’s films, starting with The Purple Rose of Cairo. As a Casting Director, his credits include: Luc...
September 2011
1 post
Auditioning is...
a teachable skill!
June 2009
1 post
Less IS More!!
The Joy of Less
By PICO IYER
“The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches…My [life] is one long sequence of inner miracles.” The young Dutchwoman Etty Hillesum wrote that in a Nazi transit camp in 1943, on her way to her death at Auschwitz two months later. Towards the end of his life, Ralph Waldo Emerson...
May 2009
2 posts
Check Out: makingof.com →
NATALIE PORTMAN LAUNCHES MAKINGOF.COM FOR FILM FANS
By Muriel Vega on April 29, 2009 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) Natalie Portman isn’t one to stand still for very long, and after her stint behind the camera in New York, I Love You, the actress is ready to teach (and learn from) others by creating an online film school. Along with a friend, Portman launched MakingOf.com, a chance...
Acting Classes and One Minute Monologues
A dear friend, wonderfully accomplished actor, and renowned and revered acting teacher, George DiCenzo, invited me to attend his acting class. I felt compelled to write about.
Unbeknownst to his students, I, (along with several other actors auditing the class), was invited to see each of his students perform a 1-minute monologue. The students were not told anything in advance, as a sort of...
April 2009
1 post
HEADSHOT WORRIES
Here is a portion of an e-mail I recently received:
Thank you so very much for taking up your time to talk with me. I’ve rewritten my resume and am interviewing with several photographers for headshots. However, there is one last question I should have asked you: what do you think I could be marketed as? That may sound like a broad question, but I liked and understood your comments about my...
March 2009
15 posts
Casting Director Profiles →
“Tell the truth. It’s the easiest thing to remember”
– David Mamet
True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor
“In short: there are no rules. And here they are.”
– Scott Mc Cloud, Making Comics.
'process' not 'result'
you’ve got to think of auditions more as rehearsals or workshops rather than ‘opening nights’! auditions are much easier to wrap your head around, if the headspace you’re in is ‘workshop’ instead of ‘performance.’
“…people don’t behave against their true nature. That’s what I...”
– Philip Seymour Hoffman
“One of the most important keys to acting is curiosity. I am curious to the...”
– Meryl Streep
Lynne Hirschberg NYTimes Magazine article on Philip Seymour Hoffman
room tone...
had my class in a small, windowless, airless studio today…a eureka moment…
auditioning (working) in a smallwindowlessairless room exponentially changes the ‘algebra’! even the shortest, briefest silence sucks every drop of air out of the room.
warning: in this environment, best to pick up those cues..tighten gaps..
make art... →
“breathe, and rise above it”
– paul dallaghan, yogaman
by any means necessary...
check out one of my followers: lillianmara.
i really liked her reel! the only thing i would suggest is change the whole ‘hire me,’ pick me, love me thing…
obviously, you want us to hire you. we get that. don’t beat us over the head with it.
choose instead to say something interesting about yourself. unique to you. something that we couldn’t possibly associate...
audition audition audition
auditioning really cannot be taught. acting can sort of be taught (more on that later), but no one can teach you what it’s like to audition. you just have to DO it (like NIKE)! over and over and over and over (are you getting it?) again. and i mean for everything you might be remotely right for. and if you can’t find anything you might be remotely right for, then audition for...
“‘casting has been defined as the process by which a producer decides which...”
– rambling reporter robert osborn hollywood reporter c. 1988
actors want to know
cbeth:
toddcast:
this casting director will tell you…
My office-neighbor just started a tumblr. You guys should get on this, especially all you actor/waiters out there in New York and LA.
thanks to ‘cbeth’ i’m giving this a go. call it casting 2.0.
“‘beyond myself somewhere, i wait for my arrival’”
– octavio paz…brilliant!
actors want to know
this casting director will tell you…