You can’t swing a cat in Hollywood without hitting a show biz wannabe. Everyone is an actor, or working on a script, or trying to be someone’s publicist or agent. A fraction of them ever get paid for doing it, or even do any of it at all. The people who are actually working might not even bring up what they do unless you ask them. Except at Hollywood parties. It’s almost an assumption that you’re in the biz if you attend, though it may consist mostly of pretenders.
A number of people who say they were “discovered” – and a huge number of people other people say were “discovered” – put no small amount of effort into being in the right place at the right time, developing their talents, etc. Except for Lana Turner, you have to work on having your lucky break. Even Harrison Ford tried acting before turning to carpentry.
He could act just fine; he was suffering from schizophreniawhile on the show, which affected his performance drastically (he had to keep a very tight control or else he might start hallucinating, for instance).
But the demonstration he put on at the con had nothing to do with that. The reaction on stage to a person entering the room involved him turning his head and body to indicate he noticed the entry. For movies/TV, the only thing you moved was your eyes. It’s a subtle point, but if you tried stage movement in a movement, it’d look showy and unnatural, and if you used the movie acting on stage, no one could see your reaction. That’s the type of thing you have to learn in order to be an actor.
But if you think that anyone can act at a professional level, prove it: Start doing it now and call me when you can make money at it.
Two examples I know of, and have no reason to believe were just PR:
During development of the sitcom The Facts of Life, Charlotte Rae visited a girls’ school for research. She and the producers were so impressed with one of the girls, Mindy Cohn, that they cast her in the show.
The current season of America’s Next Top Model includes one contestant who was spotted by producer and host Tyra Banks while he was working on an ice cream truck.
Why not. Agents are always scouting for fresh faces. If you are in the right ice cream line, and it’s your lucky day, you may get noticed.
Actress Tricia Helfer was reportedly standing in a moive theater line when an agent approached her. Her modeling and subsequent acting career was very successful.
As always, the crowdsourcing of knowledge from the dope comes up with a very reasonable answer. Yes, it’s plausible/possible but it’s not a guarantee. Lots of faces that are found amongst the unwitting and are given auditions, or at least contacts so they can schedule an audition. This ranges from the bottom (catalogue modeling of which I know a few friends who’ve previous appeared in JC Penny catalogues and the like) to full blown legitimate acting gigs (Chris Klein was discovered on location at the HS where they shot Election).
Wrong. Let’s take it in stages. All very little kids are cute. They don’t get selected based on cuteness, they get selected based on their ability to behave when separated from momma.
Older kids - say 8 or 9 - already can demonstrate the charisma needed to act. The first level audition my daughter’s manager used was to have each kid say “I love Cheerios.” That is enough to winnow out 99% of the kids. If you have been around professional kids you soon get able to tell what makes them special. That’s why nod politely and smile at the parents who say “my kid can do that if we wanted to.” Because they can’t. When they can it is obvious. A kid my daughter carpooled with to a theater camp could. We recommended him to her manager, he got signed immediately, and got fairly big roles in two real movies.
Sigh. Casting directors don’t pay the salary - they get a fee for finding the right people. Trawling malls would be a total waste of their time. And except for maybe the very highest levels, casting directors don’t even contact actors directly. They send requirements out to a bunch of agents who look through their stable to find kids who fit. In New York they contact the kid’s manager who provides the information. I think in Hollywood kids sign with agents directly. In NY agents are not exclusive - my daughter has one manager and maybe a dozen agents.
Even if a casting director by chance saw a kid who was good for a particular role, she would direct the kid to an agent or manager first. As I said casting directors don’t pay actors - the production company pays the agent who pays the manager who pays the kid. It is not like the production company pays more or less money depending on whether an agent is involved - that is set by SAG and AFTRA.
Now I can see agents being alert to signing kids, since they are going to get more than one gig’s worth out of them. And pure beauty is not the criterion - it is the type of kid that casting directors and production companies are looking for at that time. If there are tons of “beautiful children” already signed being beautiful ain’t going to cut it, and being more of a character kid will. Now, like I said, the agent will probably be able to screen out most of the kids based on their reaction to the agent coming up and the first words out of their mouths. Shyness don’t cut it in this business.
BTW, if all you think a kid has to do is smile you clearly haven’t ever been anywhere near a set. Thousands of dollars are riding on a kid behaving. Any crap and the kid gets fired. Nick Studios in Orlando used to (and still might) have a kind of audition for kids to do promos which consisted basically of Simon Says. My kid did it, and won, but there was nothing being filmed. (She got her revenge by being on a Nick series.) It is not a bad initial screening.
We went undercover once at one of the ripoff places that tell you your kids is wonderful, and to get your baby in the business all you need to do is to buy this set of photos. One of the kids on Cosby actually came from there - they do send in pictures (anyone can) and she was a good enough match to get an audition. Of course the first thing she did was to dump them and get a real manager.
By the way, if you want to see an accurate view of this process (well, a little accurate) find Life with Mikey.. Too insider to be good for most people, but we could tell the real agencies that ere shown fictionalized in the movie. We never said bull shit once when watching it. I’m not saying it is good, just accurate.
I believe it. But modeling is very different from acting. It is more about the current look and the visual impression. And it doesn’t pay as well, and, not being unionized, is a big pain usually. One of my daughter’s acting friends did modeling - K-mart ads and she was on the boxes of some Crayola products. Models don’t get residuals - nuff said.
Since this involves show business, I’m sending this over to Central Casting … I mean, Cafe Society.
Darn right. Some people can do both, but a lot are much better at one or the other.
As for your second point, right again. Agents often have open calls. All someone has to do is to go to one and see what happens. Kids have it easier since most directors don’t want training, they want charisma and naturalness. Adults probably could use some, but still, an agent can tell right away if there is anything there. I know I can’t do it.
He who Central Casts the first Sharon Stone …
A million years ago (1930’s) my mother’s oldest brother was scouted by Hollywood after being heard singing in church. He was a good looking little kid with a killer soprano. He sang as soloist in the church choir and they wanted to bring him to Hollywood and put him in movies. My grandparents didn’t think that was a good atmosphere to bring up a kid and said no. Things are different now, but I could see something like that happening today. If you could catch a Hollywood type in church.
StG
ISTR the young girl who played Cosette in the recent Les Mis film was spotted in a school play and recruited for the role.
From what I’ve seen, that’s where you start in Hollywood, with an agent. A number of agents specializing in children are basically a volume business, they’ll send everyone out hoping something sticks.
But you are correct that for children older than diaper-age they are looking for what I call “self possessed”. They can listen, sit still, take instruction, hit their mark, follow cues, say their lines, and do that over and over for hours on end without squirming or melting down. After all, there are multitudes of people running sound, and lights, and cameras, and directing, and makeup, and continuity, and etc. relying on junior to get the job done. Not a lot of kids (or adults) can manage that.
A modern example is Rosario Dawson. She was sitting on the front steps of her apartment building in New York City with some friends when she was fifteen. Two men walked by and saw her. They told her they were making a movie and asked her if she wanted to audition for a part.
The two men were Larry Clark and Harmony Korine and they actually were making a real movie (they had been scouting locations in Dawson’s neighbourhood). Dawson auditioned for a part and was cast in the movie (Kids) which was the start of her professional career.
I was comparing to New York, where you sign with a manager, and then the manager sets you up with several agent interviews. When we moved to the Bay Area my daughter got an agent in LA, and went to an audition or two, but it wasn’t worth it over that distance. So she went into directing. 
One of the kids on her series was absolutely perfect for his part. He got found from some sort of junior high program, so he could qualify as being “discovered.” However he was a real pain in the ass, vanished before shots, and in general caused the production problems. I don’t know what the hell the adult with him was thinking. My daughter got a lot of his lines, and then he was gone, replaced by a nice kid not nearly as good a match. So success takes a lot more than smiling.
I’ve always suspected this is why the acting in so many old black & white movies looks “unnatural” to me. The actors (and maybe the directors) were stage people making the move to film, and it took a while for them to catch on that the “big movements” needed so that the people sitting in the back row of the theater could tell what you were doing/feeling (because they can’t make out facial expressions from way back there) were unnecessary when you had the ability to do closeup shots with the camera.
Talkies or silent? Because silent films had relatively few captions, so lots of emotions that would be expressed in dialog had to be expressed by the big movements you mentioned, and they had to be extra broad so they wouldn’t get missed.
Most of this was gone by the early '30s when directors figured out what worked and when stage actors who couldn’t tone it down for the talkies stopped getting hired.
Talkies - I haven’t seen many silent films. But yeah, it did seem to disappear fairly soon, but not immediately. The one “big movement” that comes to mind is when an actress puts the back of her hand to her mouth to show “fear”. That one always struck me as a carryover from the stage. I know I’ve never seen anybody do that in “real life”.
Pamela Anderson first got noticed in 1989 attending a CFL game in Vancouver. Wearing a tight outfit that showed her two assets, the stadium video screen showed her to the massive approval of the crowd. From that she went to disrobing for “Playboy”, a role on “Home Improvement” and eventually the show that defined the peak of creative genius “Baywatch”.
I don’t see it in wiki but weren’t Barry and Stanley Livingstone of “My Three Sons” discovered by an agent when they were at a swimming pool? That what I remember from a Melissa Gilbert produced tv film on child actors.
To answer the OP question on whether a stranger saying he was an agent would be thought to be a pervert, he might but not as often. In a lot of ways, it was a simpler and more trusting time.