I got my SAG card quite unexpectedly. I was here in Los Angeles doing a play called 'Vanities' - it was 1976, I believe - and I got invited by Dustin Hoffman, whom I'd met in New York, to come audition for a movie he was directing.

I went to audition for an episode of 'Law and Order,' and they didn't understand why I was talking so fast, and I was like, 'No, you don't understand. I was on a show called the 'Gilmore Girls.' We had to say everything like that.'

The first feature film I did, when I did 'Night Shift,' I improvised quite a bit because I would improvise at the audition, so sometimes I would return to the original lines, and then when I was on set, I would improvise even more.

Sometimes you go into a waiting room, and the audition room is right there, and the walls are extremely thin. And you can hear every breath that they're saying. And you're used to that. So you go in, and you're like, 'Oh, whatever.'

Investment banks started recruiting at Harvard back in the day, and they'd fly me down to New York City and I was so poor so I would take advantage of the free flight, the per diem, the hotel. And then I would go audition for stuff.

My identity was tangled up in the parts that I had played since I was a child. I would go through my closet and only see audition clothes: Brie looking older, Brie looking '60s, Brie looking '40s, Brie looking younger in the future.

So the only things I was being allowed to audition for were small roles in comedies. It broke my heart. No one would see me for anything else. I knew, in order to open up my career, I had to leave or that's all I would ever be given.

The first time I met Garry Shandling was my audition for 'The Larry Sanders Show,' with Garry and his casting director Francine Maisler. I can recall every minute of it. He was gracious and kind, and he read with me. He was terrific.

I'm lucky because I had blonde hair for a while for this TV show I was doing - they had me dye my hair blonde - and every audition I was going out for was bleach blonde. The mean girl, the pretty girlfriend, and the dumb cheerleader.

I still audition a lot and work really hard to get work. So I don't really walk around feeling like I've made it. My short term goals are really just to be creatively stimulated and to be excited about material I might be working on.

In high school, I tried out for every sport there was. But none of them would have me. When I was a freshman, someone asked me to go audition for a play with them. I got in and didn't want to do anything else for the next four years.

I auditioned for Lamorne Morris' part, Winston, on 'New Girl.' In the scene, the character was eating a mayonnaise sandwich. I thought, 'Nobody else is going to go into the audition eating, and this is how I'm gonna set myself apart.'

The new 'Creed 2' movie is coming out, so I was actually going to audition for that. Got a little audition tape, so hopefully that goes through. That would be pretty neat. Being Ivan Drago's son in the movie? That would be pretty fun.

My last audition for 'Baby Driver,' I had to meet with Jon Hamm and go through the scenes. I was a bit nervous: 'What if Jon Hamm dislikes me? This is the end.' I also watched 'Mad Men' religiously, so that didn't help with my nerves.

I'm super and very openly obsessed with voice-over. 'In a World...' was my love letter to the industry of voice-over. And in a way, I sometimes think of it as a 93-minute audition to the voice-over industry to say, 'Hey. Consider me!'

I would drive down in my Volkswagen Jetta to Los Angeles and just audition, audition, audition, audition, and hopefully get something. I did that for two years, and the third year I came down, I auditioned for 'How I Met Your Mother.'

My teachers encouraged me to audition for some professional work during our summer vacation. I landed my first job. It was for the National Theatre Company's Mimika Pantomime troupe. I ended up touring with them for the next two years.

I emceed in metro Detroit throughout college, and even when I moved to New York, I would actually fly back on a Friday, emcee on a Saturday, and fly back on Sunday so that I could audition during the week. It was a big part of my life.

Very little gets offered to me. I have to audition and bawl my eyes out. For 'Broadchurch,' the scene was Danny lying on the mortuary table. I can't remember the last audition I had where I didn't come out drenched in sweat, puffy-eyed.

The stressful thing about being an actor is, like, you have to kind of audition again and again and again, you know? You go in one time, and you go in again for a director and then again for producers and then again and again and again.

My attitude goes back to my childhood. I used to audition for theatrical roles, and you can't stand out in a room full of ambitious eight-year-old girls by acting the wallflower. I realised then that I couldn't do things half-heartedly.

When you audition for something, and you book it, you think, 'Okay, well, I got the job, and now I actually have to show up on set and do it.' So, you show up on set, and you don't know, 'Am I going to get swallowed up by these people?'

I originally went up for a role on the spinoff show, 'Legends of Tomorrow,' and that led me to audition for Wally West in 'The Flash'. I enjoy auditioning in general, but this was a particularly fun process because it was so unexpected.

As soon as they sent me an email saying that 'Stranger Things' is having an audition and they'd like you to come in, I just thought, 'Oh boy, this might be fated.' I hadn't really watched the show, but I binged it and fell in love with it.

I got the regular call, that they were doing a Broadway musical of Hairspray, and would I come and audition. I was familiar with the movie, because at the time it came out my lover wrote for Premiere magazine, and we had to see everything.

I've always found that I have to audition, but that's a process that I kind of enjoy. I enjoy the challenge, and 'We're The Millers' was the same. It was a long audition process that I had to go through, but I enjoyed the challenge of that.

I had a Taco Bell audition where I had to wear a huge sombrero and walk around like an idiot. I got call-backs for the movie 'Twister,' did small independent stuff that I won't name. But it led to all my breakthrough moments on 'Entourage.'

I didn't get jobs because when I went into the audition, I tried to be somebody else. I had to realize, what I can actually bring to the table is unique. No one else has experienced what I've experienced; no one else has walked in my shoes.

Athletes who take to the classroom naturally or are encouraged to focus on grades should be able to do well in the classroom. I believe the reason you go to college is to get your degree. It's not a minor league or an audition for the pros.

I love auditioning. Since 'The Notebook' and 'Wedding Crashers,' I don't have to audition anymore, and I miss it. You get to show your interpretation of the character. I get nervous when I don't audition. What if they hate what I want to do?

When we were doing 'The Office,' there was an area backstage where they worked on hair and makeup, and I was sitting there waiting to get ready to go on, and one of the writers went, 'I want you to audition for 'Bad Teacher.'' I went, 'Okay!'

For my first role, I had to audition five times. I've gotten a lot of no's and rejections. But I just had to keep working hard. I took classes; I worked on my craft and continued to work with an acting coach and just didn't give up on myself.

Anytime I audition for something, it's always a question of whether or not the people I'm auditioning for understand I'm an improviser and I like to do that, and if they like that or if they just want someone who's going to do what's written.

I was on vacation with my family when I got the scripts for 'Wanderlust' and I was trying to work on the audition while I was on vacation. I remember a big gust of wind blew the entire script into the pool, so I had to dry it with a hairdryer.

Not that I'm in the stage of my career where they're offering me parts in 'The Revenant,' but I try very hard to go through the audition process because I feel like I learn quite a lot about the character and the people I'm going to work with.

Louis Walsh, he made me audition for Girls Aloud, he said, 'If you don't, I won't speak to you again.' I was like, 'We don't speak that much anyway.' I went and it all worked out well, I wouldn't have gone to the audition if it wasn't for him.

I'm persistent. In the early '60s, when I first started making the rounds in New York for theater work, I became more and more enraged every time I had an interview or audition that went nowhere, and became more determined. I haven't lost that.

I think you can assume because our pool of Asian-Americans actresses or actors - men and women - is pretty small, that whatever project is out there I probably have been asked to audition or I probably chose to not go in it for various aspects.

I was shooting for 'Maaya' when I got a call from John Abraham's office. They told me about the film and asked if I could audition. But since I was shooting, I recorded my audition and sent them the tapes. The next thing I know, I was on board.

People had told me to try 'The X Factor' for years, but I thought I'd be moody and hate it all. But it's what I needed. I asked Mum and Dad to come to my 'X Factor' audition, and it was the first time that they'd been in the same room in years.

When I was a model, I started with an opinion, but was encouraged to lose it. It began as play-acting, but then I lost sight of myself a bit: so when I did the audition for 'Popworld' and they asked my opinion, I felt like crying with happiness.

A lot of times I would go into a room and audition for whatever sitcom it was and they would expect me to do sort of what my dad was doing and I am not him so they would be disappointed and I would feel nervous and not know exactly how to do it.

Two days before I got the audition for 'Extras,' I was offered a theatre role, and I asked my husband, Terry, whether I should take it or not. He said, 'No, wait and see what else comes in.' Lo and behold, along came 'Extras.' Now that was lucky!

If I had any advice to give people, it would be to relax; never treat an audition like an emergency. There will be plenty more in your career. If you think you messed up, you probably didn't. And if you did mess up, it's not the end of the world.

I was at stage school in Birmingham Rep when I was called down to London for an audition in the National Theatre. Maximilian Schell, the film actor, was casting Tales from the Vienna Woods. He was looking at me for a small, but significant, role.

Both my parents were educators, so interviews and college applications and shaking hands and looking people in the eye and feeling confident and knowing what you can bring to any project or audition - I've known about these things my entire life.

In about 9th grade, an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He said I should audition for a performing arts high school, so I did on a whim. I got accepted. Then I got accepted at the Julliard School, and by then, I was serious about it.

Acting is so much about waiting... waiting for an audition, waiting for the right part to come along. It's nice to write your own thing, write about what you're feeling and then go out and perform them. It's a nice thing to have and not get bored.

And then I saw this article in 'Time Out' magazine for TV presenters, so I went along with my sisters and we did this audition. It was open auditions, it was just a fun day out, but there were maybe 600 people there or something. It was just crazy.

All you have is yourself and what you have to present, and just focus on that. And if you can walk out of the audition and say to yourself, 'I hit all my beats,' 'I accomplished my emotional honesty,' or 'I remembered my words,' then that's winning.

Share This Page