Daisy Hicks followed the path of many performers who want to explore another side of the business. After making the rounds auditioning, she left the acting side and applied to an assistant position at i4 Casting in Sydney. It was done on a whim, but she got the job. She’s one of the youngest members of the Casting Guild of Australia and has worked her way up to be a casting director just a few years into her tenure. Hicks now works on i4’s extensive commercial roster, but she’s made a name for herself in the theater world, casting plays and musicals, music videos, and more—all while using her performance background to relate to those on the other side of the table.
How has your acting experience helped your casting work?
It’s been really useful. I have a lot more empathy for the actors and for the producers, as well. It gives you a sense of well-rounded understanding because there’s so much involved throughout each medium. It also helps me when speaking to directors; I understand that there are some things that some actors won’t do. It’s good to have that performance background behind me in the sense that I think there are a handful of people who say, “Oh, actors get there and they act and that’s it.” There’s a lot more behind what they do. I don’t think they just turn up and act. They’re not just a pretty face.
What has being a CD taught you about the process that you wish you’d known when you were an actor?
I was auditioning a lot of the time for bigger musicals, and I was getting really close to getting the role but not. The most heartbreaking part of my job is knowing what it’s like to be one of those people in that final group of actors and trying not to get my hopes up. Those people worked so hard to get to that place, and they’re willing to work so much harder if you need them to, and then they don’t get it. But now I know there’s nothing I can do as a CD, and there’s nothing, really, that an actor can do. It is just the fact of the matter that one person was a bit more suitable. I wish I could just comfort actors by telling them something is going to come along soon, something is going to be right and you’re going to be perfect for it and you’re going to be the person feeling the best.
What’s the biggest faux pas in your audition room?
One of my things that I don’t like has to do specifically with film and TV auditions: when an actor is doing the scene and all of a sudden they’ll look at me when the scene is over as if to say, “I’m finished.” I want them to stay in the scene and keep acting. Instead, they’ll break character and say, “I’m done, did you want to do it again?” I don’t want someone doing my job for me. Another thing is just general politeness. You’d be surprised; politeness goes a mile. People forget sometimes. Another thing is always ask your agent if there’s a script, whether it’s a TV commercial or a short film. Usually with TV commercials, they don’t ask. If there are a couple of lines of specific dialogue and it’s actually a mini scene that needs work and they need to know the lines, I don’t want my auditions running behind because [the actors] weren’t prepared.
READ: How to Audition Internationally
What attracts you to casting a project?
I’m really passionate about a director or producer coming up to me and saying, “I’m doing a show, and it needs this really specific thing.” I want to find it. It’s like finding that diamond in the rough. Instead of seeing five actors, I’ll spend a day and see 20 that we all know, and maybe they’ve got something that we haven’t seen before. I get excited about working with actors, as well. Particularly in theater and musical theater, when the director thinks a person doesn’t have something, [I’ll take] five minutes and [have] a quick chat with the actor and just [work] with them and seeing if they can change what they’re doing. It’s about working with actors and polishing the diamonds in the rough.
What differences have you noticed between working in Australia and other English-speaking acting markets like the U.K. and U.S.?
There’s a huge difference in the number of auditions you go to. One of my friends is a musical theater performer who just moved to New York City and she can go to six auditions in a week. She said going in for auditions becomes almost like workshopping your work. In Australia, especially as far as musical theater goes, you maybe get two or three auditions in a year. I know a lot of actors get pretty bad audition anxiety, and they also tend to beat themselves up a lot more after the auditions, because there’s such a higher ratio of performers not getting the job. It’s just like a lottery in Australia because there’s a tiny chance of you getting a show, and that’s across all mediums. Shows lock down their casts, so the few shows we do have only have small guest parts available. The big difference is just the amount of work we have going on. We are starting to slowly but surely make more Australian work. Australia is doing some really great quality stuff—there’s just not as much of it, unfortunately. It’s a real shame, because we do have such an incredible crop of actors. It would be great to give them more work at home, but that’s why you see so many of them in the U.K. and the States.
Is that part of the reason so many Australian actors look elsewhere for work?
Yeah, I think so. There’s also the mythology around Hollywood and Broadway where they seem so shiny with possibility. But a lot of people say, “Well, I’m not getting work here so I might as well give it a crack over there.” As a CD, it puts you in a hard place because you don’t want to say to someone, “Don’t chase your dreams.” If you want to be someone like Chris Hemsworth, for example, he did a whole bunch of stuff over here before he left Australia. But then again, there are those crazy stories about how people get discovered randomly in America or in the U.K. It’s another one of those lottery situations.
Looking to get cast? Apply to casting calls on Backstage.