Advice to Actor Hopefuls from Tony Nixon

To all of you young ladies who have been emailing us begging for advice on how to audition for Polly Plummer in The Magician’s Nephew, this story is for you! Tony Nixon, who played Rynelf in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, has typed a really cool blog offering advice to aspiring actors and actresses who want to be in future Narnia films.

When a film is cast it is the job of the casting director(s) to find suitable applicants to audition. Every now and then we might see a “worldwide campaign” to find the next (insert stars name here) and thousands of young hopefuls lined up around the block to get seen. But honestly I can’t remember the last time this happened. It’s not practical and is time consuming. Usually the method is this.

1) A casting brief is sent out to Actors agents (possibly worldwide, but for smaller roles usually in the country where most of the filming will take place) this brief will contain details of the role. A Character description, Age, Gender and any physical traits etc, ethnicity.

2) The Actors agents then submit Actors they represent that they think might be suitable for the role. Occasionally an Actor may hear through the grapevine of a role and ask his/her Agent to submit them for it.

3) The casting director (s) will decide who they want to see for Auditions. The director may also be involved in seeing the selection of reduced candidates. Now they may ask to see you on a show-reel (DVD) or they may ask to audition you straight away, it varies. For overseas jobs I have sent show-reels and audition tapes.

4) IF you get an audition you may get the role or you may just go through to “Call back” auditions and have to audition again.

To read Tony’s full blog, you can check it out here.