Rudin - Confessions of a casting director: help actors land any role with secrets from inside the audition room

For my parents, Marcia Rudin and Rabbi James Rudin. Thank you for supporting my creative passions, schlepping me to all my auditions, and assuring me I was talented even when I didnt get the role. Mother, I wont forget to let you swim in my pool when I become rich and famous.

For my sister, Rabbi Eve Rudin. You are the best sister in the world and a constant voice of rational wisdom. Thank you for costarring in all of our childhood productions when I know you really wanted to be watching The Bionic Woman instead.

For Emma Mollie Weiner, my supercool niece. Its clear from your always original Passover plays and love of singing that youve taken after your Auntie Jen. However, I would also be very happy if you decided to become a medical engineer or a rabbi like your mother and Grandpa Jim.

For Rabbi Elliott Kleinman. Thank you for encouraging me to read my book drafts out loud, and also for loving my sister.

And finally, for Andy Finkelstein. You encouraged me to bring the book to life and I am eternally thankful for your support. I love our life together and could not imagine a single day without you. Namaste, baby.

Without wonder and insight, acting is just a business. With it, it becomes creation.

BETTE DAVIS

If only Jen Rudin had asked me to write a simple blurb for her book, we wouldnt be sitting here at Le Pain Quotidien thirty-four days later.

For the last five weeks I have tried to prioritize, integrate, and concentrate effort in the service of effective goal execution: namely, writing this foreword. A blurb I could have banged out 48,960 minutes ago. Concise laudatory sentences are in my line. Write. Rewrite. Add. Edit. Stop. Instead, Ive started and restarted versions of a foreword that in no way resemble what you see now.

The circumstances demand an explanation. What? Why? How could this have taken me so long?

Well...

Heres the problem. Sifting through the necro-bag of disfavored auditions is upsetting. So many disappointments. Some of my losses are my fault. Some are not. All the rejection twenty-two years in SAG-AFTRA can offer. Its bleak. Like Ethan Frome.

Would things have been different if Id had Jens book? Absolutely, unequivocally: yes.

When luck found me in 1992, I had no training and very little acting experience. I just happened to meet Ben Stiller at a deli. A more enterprising person would have wanted to learn everything they didnt know about acting, but enterprising would have interfered with my drinking. (I used to be a hoarder of alcohol, but Ive given that up. Now I go to bead stores. Im crafty.)

Focus, Janeane, focus.

Compose a foreword that is filled with: Insight. Information. Advice.

So many roles. There are so many acting roles out there that dont have to be played by white people, men, young kids, or girls with high erotic appeal. (Low erotic appeal is a phrase once used by a director to tell me why I couldnt audition for a part where the appealerotic or otherwisewas irrelevant. But I liked the sound of it and I put it on my rsum.)

Now Im not going to sugarcoat itacting is tough. So many possibilities go unexplored. So many performances unrealized. Tapes unsent, unseen. Landing that first role seems near impossible when youre new to the game, and it all starts with the hardest part: the audition.

Ive had plenty of audition fails in my lifemy most epic fail was for the movie Mona Lisa Smile. The audition was once described as the worst audition shes ever seen. She = the casting director. I hope shes okay. The Spanish Armada was the worst naval disaster ever seen, and it took Spain ten years to recover. Le Pain, Le Pain Quotidien!

My least favorite auditions are the ones that never happened. Careers pivot on access to opportunity. Frustration comes when diversity in gender, age, ethnicity, and aesthetics are seen as liabilities rather than assets. This is unfortunately a very real part of this business, and it takes a strong person to survive the inevitable rejections.

My favorite auditions? All of them, the ones that did happen. Even when they sucked. I enjoy auditioning. I take it seriously. Its a chance to perform. Learn something. Meet people. Sadly, most scripts are not written by the Coen brothers. This means you will be polishing a few turds. Its important to get good at that because the better you are, the less turds youll have to polish.

The epically awesome audition story? My hero, director Scott Elliott, cast me in a play called Russian Transport by Erica Scheffer. I loved being a part of the New Group Theater, and this was the role that got me my Actors Equity Card.

Remember, through all the auditions, the good and the not so good: Jen Rudin is on your side. Most casting people are. Casting directors want you to do well, and Jen is one of the best out there. She cast me in roles as varied as the voice of a giraffe in an animated movie and a federal agent looking for Nikola Teslas lost designs.

My advice to you? Take Jens expertise, knowledge, and skill set, and combine them with yours. Absorb the information until it becomes habitual, reflexive. Do everything in your power to optimize your chances for success, because its a large school of fish out there, and they all want to be caught. Regrettably, show business is not a meritocracy. Act like it is. (If you want a meritocracy, check out the 2016 Olympics in Brazil.)

And so, dear reader, the choice is yours. Read this book. Learn it. Utilize it. Or become a common turd polisher. Trust me, you need this book. Itll make things a hell of a lot easier!

Dont be afraid of it. Its just brunch. Iron Chef Bobby Flay.

Now comes my French exit.

JANEANE GAROFALO

I n 1978, I was six years old, and my older sister Eve and I were obsessed with the television show The Brady Bunch. The show ran in syndication every night at six and then again at seven. The Brady Bunch dominated our daily lives so much that our family had to rush through dinner at six thirty to make sure wed finish in time for the next episode.

By age six, I was already a budding young actress overflowing with confidence and certain that I was the perfect girl to play the role of Cindy Brady, should they ever need to recast. Cindy and I were both younger sisters with blue eyes and blond hair. And we wore hair ribbons made of colored yarn in our pigtails. Desperate to play Cindy, I mailed my first-grade class photo to the local station that aired The Brady Bunch. In my typewritten submission letter, I asked them to please contact me for an audition should the role of Cindy become available. At some point, my parents broke the news that the Brady Bunch episodes were actually reruns and not taped live. I quickly redirected my obsession to Melissa Gilbert, on Little House on the Prairie, and the Broadway musical Annie.

My parents were very supportive of Eves and my artistic pursuits, which included weekly ballet classes. One day our Russian ballet teacher pulled my mother aside and said, If I could combine Eves body with Jennys confidence and poise, I might have a ballerina. But I dont. So we quit ballet and I started acting classes at the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. Eve took up violin and music theory at the Mannes School of Music and started playing Vivaldi. I starred as Linus in our Hebrew schools second-grade production of