Casting Couch Casualty

How do you spell „actress“ with three words? M-U-G.

Yes, sometimes I am so blonde it would embarrass even Barbie.
I honestly don’t see how something like this can keep happening to me- why do I keep falling for lies and deceit by so-called “producers” when I could be learning from my mistakes?
I guess you just believe what you want to believe, and actors are prime candidates for denial, self-deceit and naivety.
Otherwise we’d be in a different profession, wouldn’t we?

I am not the only person who keeps getting persuaded by clever charlatans to believe in no-existent projects and productions- a good friend of mine who has worked with Joaquin Phoenix and Steven Seagal is presently just untangling himself from the third such wannabe filmmaker who approached him in just 10 months. He has put faith, time and money into projects which were doomed to failure as soon as those over-enthusiastic underachievers who pretend to be producing them, attached themselves and their unfounded bullshit.

So, what actually happened?
I set up a meeting with a supposed producer on a Cuban scuba diving series which all sounded plausible enough until I realised the focus of our dinner-cum-meeting wasn’t to be a face-to face “getting to know one another” in an informal way which climaxed in my handing over of my show reel, CV and headshot, but rather a “filmed, improvised casting” at an undisclosed address- after 8pm in the evening.
He was a nice enough guy, a sort of 60-something Paul Newman type, but most things he told me were either irrelevant to the project (“my houses, my car, my art, my money…”) or totally fantastical (like that he’d privately taught Leni Riefenstahl to scuba dive- I know for a fact she had to lie about her age in order to qualify for her PADI license, so she learned it officially and not from some lothario in cashmere swim shorts).
I also researched some of the names he’d dropped into the conversation and it turned out that one of the actresses he’d been supposedly hanging out with in Tanzania, had died 20 years ago- how is someone like that still a relevant name to drop to a 20-something actress at a business meeting which is meant to be concerned with a future collaboration?

I was well and truly had.
Another little thing which made me suspicious was the way he reacted to my taking a phone call from a friend in London, inviting me to dinner. I kept the conversation brief, told him I was out to dinner already- in Munich- and that I’d call him when I got back. This short interruption prompted “Mr Producer” to remark in an annoyed way whether I couldn’t switch my phone off to avoid it “ringing all night”, to which I answered that I didn’t expect it to ring again. I also didn’t turn it off because this episode reminded me a little too strongly of the other uncomfortable situation with a producer I had found myself in two years ago.

Towards the end of our dinner which was in a way a not entirely unpleasant event in which I kept asking questions which he found constantly new ways of dodging, he dropped the bombshell that we’d be “going somewhere to make a little recording”- I was stunned and told him I was meeting friends at a club later, and that I wasn’t prepared to go to a private address with him without any prior warning.
I actually stayed extremely polite and charming during this little exchange, I said: “don’t take this personally but I don’t know you, I wasn’t sent a script and I am not prepared to go to a private address without anyone else present”. I mean, if he’d rented a rehearsal space, set up the meeting in the daytime or if there were other actors present I might have reconsidered this offer, but under the circumstances it seemed unprofessional to the extreme.
I was also annoyed to hear about how well he was doing financially and that an airline was one of the investors (with product placement) into this series of his, yet I’d had to shell out over a hundred pounds on my flight which he didn’t expect to reimburse me for.
Still, I needed to see all this for myself.
As we exited the restaurant, I distinctly heard the Maitre d’ call him by a different name than he’d given me.
Yes, you live and learn.
We said goodbye in a civilised fashion but I don’t expect to hear from them again, unless it’s to say I was “wrong” for the “part”. Oh well…

At least he wasn’t such an unpleasant, threatening character like the guy who was attached as “producer” of the new Carry On film (nope, it’s no further up the production ladder than it was 3 years ago).
He’d actually advertised in a genuine actor’s casting resource; he was looking for a bunch of outgoing, bubbly, busty girls to fill small speaking roles in the movie as well as to contribute to its publicity by appearing as hostesses and promotional personnel during a fundraising presentation at the Houses of Parliament.
So far so good- it turned out I missed the initial round of “castings” as I was away watching my then boyfriend in an open-air Shakespeare production outside of London that weekend, but the producer encouraged me to keep calling him back to arrange an alternative date.
Which I did, frequently- spurred on by his apparent enthusiasm for meeting me.
A few weeks passed which I used to return his calls to their Pinewood production office, but no alternative meeting was arranged.
One day I lost my patience and became fed up with his constant excuses whilst he kept me in suspense, so I text him to bear me in mind in case the two celeb actresses who’d been linked to the project in the papers had either not overcome their substance abuse problem, or were unable to mutate into star performers through a few week’s acting coaching.
I knew this was cheeky, but so was his attitude and constant excuses. He’d begun to sound like a total bull-shitter which turned out to be true in the end. At least I can pride myself of good instincts, even if I chose to ignore them!
At least my text provoked a long-overdue response. He called and scolded me about my arrogance, but my spunk seemed to have impressed him (or possibly the fact that I was on my way to a day’s work on the new Cole Porter film) and he said he’d schedule a meeting soon.

We met up in a dim hotel bar near Green Park, had a chat in which he informed me that not only was he casting for the Carry On project, but also a gangster film with an LA production base; he would be meeting the production team the next day. This film may require me for the role of one of the gangsters’ girlfriend, however he criticised the portfolio and my headshot I’d brought, saying this wouldn’t impress the LA production team.
He suggested we’d take pictures back at his, as he used to be a photographer.
Yes, what was I thinking!?
This has got to be the oldest line in the “how to lay a naïve wannabe”-book, but he said it in such a plausible fashion, it was hard to disagree. I suggested coming to Pinewood the next day instead, but he insisted that time constraints and travel complications might make this difficult.
He also mentioned he was diabetic, so before I knew how I had agreed to go to dinner with him.
We went to an intimate Italian restaurant where the staff seemed to know him rather well (yet another odd parallel to my bizarre Munich experience), but his conservative view took me rather aback and I had to bite my tongue on a few occasions when he ranted about immigrants and so on.
I stayed pleasant and polite throughout, even admitting I wasn’t working much at the moment, to which he replied that “we have to get you a job” which I took as an encouraging compliment about my potential.
As we drove to his apartment, I realised it was rather late- around 10pm and I had planned to call my boyfriend to tell him how the meeting had gone.
I was also beginning to get an odd feeling about coming back to his place for the photographs- did he have a studio? Why did I feel so pressured?
So I asked him, jokingly, whether I should be worried about coming back to his flat, expecting him to reassure me.
After all I was alone with an older stranger in his car, in the dark…
He responded in a rather curt and nasty way that plenty of “famous actresses” had come to his apartment, and he’d never do anything to alarm anyone- but if I preferred I could get out and go home, thereby missing out on the opportunity to impress his LA associates because my photos were so mediocre.
He was like a bull terrier who suddenly snarls and barks at you without warning, but I felt I had to see this thing through and even apologised about my suspicion.
He seemed to calm down somewhat but it appeared to have opened a crack of nastiness in his polished exterior. Suddenly he went into how at the Playboy mansion, girls had to be perfect- if they had so much as a chipped nail, they’d be fired. This seemed to get him off somewhat, all this money and power status game appeared to hold a fetishistic appeal for him.

He parked his “one-off” Aston Martin (or Bentley or whatever it was, I forget- MG? Anyway, his wealth and connections came from a high-flying position within a luxury car manufacturing company) outside his apartment block on the south river bank opposite the Houses of Parliament, and we went inside without encountering a soul. I still felt uneasy but I saw no way out.
The flat looked anonymous and pristine. We sat down on the large sofa and he started rambling about how a lot of British girls had the “wrong attitude” or weren’t sexy enough, so they were considering casting American or European actresses for many of the parts. He seemed sexist to me, but I gave up arguing after it seemed futile.
He also told me off about keeping my phone on, suggested I told people I was a year younger than I was, and never to mention my boyfriend.
Then he asked me to walk up and down in front of him. Still I kept looking out for his elusive camera, but it remained out of sight.
I walked a bit, wondering what the point was but I began to feel like I was part of an odd power fantasy scenario.
He then started laying into me, how “nobody had showed me how to walk properly” and so on, but instead of making helpful suggestions or giving me constructive direction, his sole aim seemed to be to cut me down emotionally.
He said he wanted to “see me”. I replied that I was standing right there, not quite understanding what he was getting at.
In a “subtle” way he appeared to be trying to manipulate me into stripping off, without actually saying anything-clever!He even asked to see my legs, so I lifted the skirt of my dress to just above my knees, did a little twirl but then I began to feel so uncomfortable in his presence and with his nasty atmosphere, I completely froze and asked him why all this was relevant? I wanted to know if he expected to take my clothes off!?
He replied that I had the wrong attitude, he couldn’t work with me, it wasn’t working and he’d take me to the tube.
He was really rude and nasty, and I even tried to make excuses for not following his instructions and complying with his expectations, which he took as an opportunity to cut me down even more.
The funniest thing (in retrospect) he said to me was: “when the film comes out, buy a ticket and then you can sit there and think- I could have been in this film if I’d played my cards right”- yeah right. LOL!

I got to the tube, jumped out of his car (I was actually rather tempted to key it at a convenient opportunity, but with all the CCTV in London I reconsidered my plan) as quickly as I could and called my boyfriend, shaking.

I was so intimidated by this guy it took me around 24 hours to report him to Equity and relevant actor’s publications, who all encouraged me and told me other little tales of people he’d conned in similar, if not quite so severe fashions.
There was no point in ringing the police or anything, after all apart from making me feel threatened he hadn’t done anything. I bet he learned his methods of psychological manipulation from fellow windy types in LA, but lost his sense of humour on the way.

I wondered how many other (younger?) girls would have fallen for his bullshit, been intimidated enough to strip off or worse, and how many people never reported a bastard like him because they blame themselves.
The mind boggles!