Bonnie Gillespie is an author, producer, and casting director. She specializes in casting SAG indie feature films and has been named in Back Stage West’s “Best of Los Angeles” Issue multiple times. Founder and producer of Somebody’s Basement, Your Actor MBA, and Hollywood Happy Hour, Bonnie’s weekly column, The Actors Voice, is available at Showfax.com and her weekly podcast, The Work, is available at PodcastingTheWork.com. Her books include Casting Qs: A Collection of Casting Director Interviews, Self-Management for Actors: Getting Down to (Show) Business, and Acting Qs: Conversations with Working Actors. Bonnie has been interviewed on BBC Breakfast, on UTV-Ireland’s Gerry Kelly Goes to Hollywood, on CBC Radio One, on Judy Kerr’s Internet series, Acting Is Everything, and for E! gossip column The Answer B!tch.

Bonnie, as you can see, is a very busy woman!  We were so thrilled she took the time to answer our questions.

You were one of the first (if not the first) providing advice and information to actors online.  How did your column, The Actors Voice, begin?

I had been writing for Back Stage (then called Back Stage West) for several years. I interviewed several hundred casting directors, and that’s how I ultimately got into casting—through a relationship created out of one of the interviews I had conducted. I’d been in love with the good folks at Breakdown Services for years by then, and they had used me as a moderator for many panels featuring casting directors, even while I was writing for Back Stage. About a year after I left Back Stage and after a series of meetings about a then-emerging tool called Actors Access, we started talking about having me write a weekly column for the site. Of course, I had been missing my weekly ritual of writing for actors, so I was thrilled to have a new home. Gary Marsh and Bob Brody gave me tons of room to play, and it’s been ridiculously fun to write every week.

How do your different roles – casting director, author, producer – work together?  Do they ever conflict?  Do you have any techniques for others that wear many hats for how to juggle it all?

I have to say, I’m very lucky for the timing, here. It’s a lot like Outliers, in that being born at the right place in the right era with the right skills can offer a huge advantage. I’m not saying I have that, because I’ve been a few years too early for comfort in this industry, sometimes, but I do have the great fortune of maybe looking like a trendsetter, simply because I’ve chosen to do something that wasn’t very popular… and then it got popular. Case in point: self-publishing my books. Back in 2002, when we published Casting Qs (based on my first hundred interviews for Back Stage), self-publishing was seen as a horrific thing. They called it “vanity press” and said we’d never get our books taken seriously at colleges and universities (which was, of course, a goal for us). Today, Self-Management for Actors is in its third edition (second printing) and on required reading lists at schools all over the country. And self-producing is not only hot now, it’s essential. Artists have to be hyphenates today.

“Hyphenate” used to be a dirty word. Now it’s not. But the key is being good at everything. Being only okay at a bunch of different things just makes you a flake. You have to be—especially in this town—exceptionally good at a few things to be taken seriously. And you have to be able to compartmentalize. You can’t flit around and be in “producer brain” when it’s time to write another book. And you can’t be in “casting mode” when you’re hiring your crew. A business partner friend of mine said just recently in a meeting—as I stopped myself on one thought, said, “Hang onto that,” and went into another one, and then came back to the original one as if taking the pause button off—”You’re like an air traffic control tower, in these meetings.” That focus, that segregation of issues, that ability to keep the chaos in order so that you can deal with only the most blazing fires first is key to juggling the hyphenate lifestyle. Not everyone’s brain is built for it.

For the past year or so, I’ve actually been transitioning out of casting (you’re getting a scoop, here) and I’m almost only ever casting projects I’m also producing. It is now taking a very special script (and/or a very special relationship with the producer or director) to woo me to “just cast” anymore. When we launched Cricket Feet, Inc., in 2002, we said our ten-year goal was to be producing. We have been producing now for a couple of years. I really like producing. I’m very good at it. I’m also good at casting—especially on the micro-budget indies and super-fun webseries—but I’m finding myself less interested in casting projects that I’m not also so passionate about that I take on a role as producer. So, to bottom-line the answer for you: Be in the moment. Deal with the most exciting and urgent things first. Rest when your body tells you that you should. Surround yourself with amazing people. Then, whatever amount of balls you’re juggling feels easy—or at least fun—to handle.

How did you get into casting?  Are there particular kinds of projects that you like to cast the most?

These days, I’m loving casting the ones I’m producing, of course. Webseries are fun because the scripts are coming to me at about the length of hour-long pilots for TV, but I’m given as much time as I would usually get for a low-budget feature film. That’s the best of both worlds, really. And I’m finding that I’m able to get some pretty fantastic people attached (folks you would never expect are interested in doing web-based work) because of where we are, in terms of the respect that web-based productions are now getting. I still love low-budget indies (I hover around the $2M mark) because that’s where my heart started, in casting. I had worked at the Sundance Institute in 2001 and 2002, so when I learned I loved casting, I knew I had to get into indie film.

My start was actually in reality TV for FOX. I had interviewed Katy Wallin (along with several hundred other CDs, of course) and she asked me to come work for her as casting coordinator on a new show. She ended up hiring me on a total of four shows (three as casting coordinator for FOX, one as full casting director for E!) and between each set of shows, I would take six weeks off and cast an indie film on my own. I was impatient. Didn’t want to work my way up through TV. Had film relationships… used ’em. In 2007, I cast my first web-based project. Most recently for the web, I cast a time-travel short for Comedy Central’s Atom.com, a series of vids for Lie To Me doctor Paul Ekman, and the mega-hit zombie-killing Bite Me (the first-ever live-action series from mega-web distributor Machinima), which is now being shopped to television for its second season.

Should an actor prepare differently for indie feature auditions than they do for other kinds of work?

I think for all auditions, actors should be as prepared as they can be. And that doesn’t just mean the standard “learn your lines” type stuff. As anyone who has read my columns or books knows, I’m a research junkie. I can always tell the difference between an actor who has downloaded the entire script, really thought about who this character is and what world he or she inhabits, and then made some very specific choices based on those observations—even if they’re wrong—and the actor who grabs the sides, spends ten minutes with them, figures, “I’ve got this,” and wings it.

That’s not to say that the less-prepared actor can’t book it, but when you have so little in your control anyway, isn’t it best to have put at least as much as is within your control in the bank? Another part of that research, of course, is about the tone of the project. If it’s TV (unless it’s a pilot—and even then, you can track the previous work of the major players involved), you should watch episodes to get the tone of the space and time and world these characters inhabit. And don’t just watch the series regulars. Watch the characters in the roles the level at which you’re auditioning (co-star, guest star, non-celeb recurring). How do they serve each week’s story?

This is a little tougher with film, of course, unless it’s a franchise. But you can still get hip to what the filmmaker’s voice is, usually. And tracking previous collaborations, you can get to know whose work consistently turns them on, and that should help inform your choices (both for submitting and when auditioning). Research, research, research. Almost every piece of advice I ever give is rooted in research. And in having a healthy mindset. Because all the research in the world won’t matter if your head’s in the wrong place. Notice I haven’t mentioned talent. That’s a given. We expect you to be brilliantly talented. Because you are, right?

What are some of the ways that the industry has changed during your time working in it?  Where do you see it going?

Wow. Seeing as my first professional acting gig was in 1977, I’m gonna have a tough time pinning that answer down. Actually, maybe by having such a long-haul view of the industry, I could state it simply: There’s more access now. Before, there was no breakdown going out in front of the actors. You had to join SAG, get an agent, and hope the agent got you and believed in you enough to pitch you, get you into the room, and then your talent could take it from there. Now, the amount of work to which an actor has access—direct access—is astounding. And it’s not just “crappy low-budget nonunion work,” as the story is often told. There’s all sorts of work—and work being created by actors themselves—that is winning Emmys and getting distribution and that’s just incredibly empowering.

I see us shifting not only out of the studio system we were in long ago, but out of the era of media conglomerate as the owner of all: the creation, the production, the distribution. We’re witnessing a lovely evolution of mini-studios, mini-distribution entities, players that aren’t monopolies entering the field of distribution quietly while the huge corporations create vertically-integrated distribution structures, attempting to keep their products in front of people across as many platforms as technology will support. It’s the mini-studios that are the end result of the types of communities we’ve been building for years, here. This goes back to the Outliers model on which I created a class for hyphenates working on the Self-Management for Actors principles: Anywhere you can gather together a group of people who will co-conspire for the group’s collective success, you can witness a tier jump faster and farther than would ever happen for any of its members, on their own.

It’s an exciting time, and right now there’s more power in being “a little guy” who’s a member of an exciting creative community than there has ever been.

Photo by Holloway Pictures