Casting By (2012)

Casting By is a 2012 documentary film directed by Tom Donahue. It combines over 230 interviews, extensive archival footage, animated stills and documents to tell the untold tale of the Hollywood casting director.

The film had its international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and its US premiere at the New York Film Festival in 2012. It was acquired by HBO Documentary Films in Toronto and had its US Broadcast premiere as part of the HBO Documentary Summer Series on August 5, 2013. In September 2013, the US theatrical rights were acquired by Submarine Deluxe.

Synopsis

The film is a celebration of the casting profession, highlighting its previously unsung role in film history while also serving as an elegy to the lost era of the New Hollywood. It focuses on casting pioneer Marion Dougherty, an iconoclast whose exquisite taste, tenacity and gut instincts brought a new kind of actor to the screen that would mark the end of the old studio system and help to usher in this revolutionary new period. The film draws a line through the last half century to show us the profession’s evolution from studio system type-casting to the rise of large ensemble films populated with unique and diverse casts.

Actors