Child’s perspectives on casting
Hi, my name is Angel, I am 11 years old now and I have been doing castings since I was 4 for TV and film. My first casting audition was very scary for me but it turned out to be so much fun. As I was only 4 years old when I first started, I don’t remember much that far back but I do remember that I was really nervous because I didn’t really know anyone and I didn’t know what it was going to be like. On most of my castings I remember I was waiting with my mum until my name was called and someone came out to get me.
One of the castings in particular was for a Chessington World of Adventurers commercial. I was given some lines for the advert which was about the theme park and in the lines I had to say about an ice cream. I was put into a group, there were about 4 other children in the group and they were all more confident than me, and we all had different lines to remember. I did my bit and they did their bit, then I went back to my mum and we went home. The next day though my mum got a call for me to go back and I was SUPER HAPPY about that so we went back and I did the audition all over again. It felt like the day was so long! I was very confident after this casting but unfortunately I did not get the job, this lowered my confidence a little bit but my mum said to me not to worry about it, sometimes you get the job and sometimes you don’t.
When I was 5, I remember another job I got and I had to do ‘Ring a ring a roses’ with Russell Brand, it was for the film ‘Get him to the Greek’. First of all we had to go to get our hair and make-up done and I really enjoyed that, then we were on set filming for a very long time. We had to do the same thing over and over again until the Director had filmed what he wanted. I remember them saying “cut” a lot a lot of times. It was great though because I had my own trailer and every hour a man came over to my trailer and asked if I wanted any sweets or a drink and of course I said “Yes” every time for the sweets. After filming, Russell Brand came and played with us, I was scared of him at first because he had 3 quarter length trousers on and he had really hairy legs and he kept saying my name and I just kept running away from him, but it was all good fun and it was amazing to meet Russell Brand himself although at the time I didn’t know how famous he was of course.
