How to Get Cast as Juliet Capulet

Credit: Kozlik

Juliet Capulet is a character from Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet.” She is the teenage daughter of Lord Capulet, the patriarch of the House of Capulet. In the story, she falls in love with Romeo Montague, of the House of Montague, a family that happens to have a blood feud with the Capulets. Despite the fact that they were born sworn enemies, the lovers can’t deny their attraction to each other. And, like every Shakespeare tragedy, doom occurs in the name of love.

Courtesy Relativity Media/Twentieth Century Fox/Classic Stage Company

Film

• Norma Shearer (“Romeo and Juliet” 1936)
• Olivia Hussey  (“Romeo and Juliet” 1968)
• Claire Danes (“Romeo + Juliet” 1996) 
• Hailee Steinfeld (“Romeo & Juliet” 2013) 

Theater

• Condola Rashad ( “Romeo and Juliet” Broadway 2013)
• Elizabeth Olsen (“Romeo and Juliet” Off-Broadway 2013) 
• Lorna Courtney (“& Juliet” Broadway 2023)

Credit: Carol Rosegg

Rashad broke new ground as the first Black woman to play the role on Broadway when she was cast as Juliet opposite Orlando Bloom as Romeo in 2013. “Black people have been performing Shakespeare for years. ...But I do believe that there are certain things that Black people are taught, whether it is from their own people or other people,” she told “Tell Me More.” “They're taught to believe that there are certain things that are just not for them, and that it’s not their reality, it’s not their world. But it could be. Shakespeare is for everybody.”

Director David Leveaux knew he’d found his Juliet when he saw the “luminous” Rashad in “Stick Fly,” where she played a maid with a secret. As he said, “That combination of wit and heart, which is what you need in a Juliet, seemed sort of irresistible to me.” And once Rashad and Bloom met, Leveaux was positive he had struck gold. “The first line out of Condola’s mouth made Orlando laugh,” he said. “I looked at him and it was like watching a man shed every ounce of armor he had as a celebrity and just adore this girl. I thought, ‘There you go.’”

For Olsen, on the other hand, taking on Juliet meant returning to her roots—she spent much of her youth onstage. When she took the role in Classic Stage Company’s off-Broadway production in 2013, she did so amid years enveloped in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but she was specifically on the artistic director’s radar. 

“For a couple of years, [CSC Artistic Director] Brian Kulick and I have been trying to figure out what to do together,” Olsen told Broadway Buzz. “...He proposed a reading of ‘Romeo & Juliet,’ and I wasn’t that interested until I started to do the work. I feel like I saw ‘Romeo & Juliet’ for the first time.” She noted, “I always thought of it as the most typical Shakespeare play; every human being on earth, if they know literature, knows ‘Romeo & Juliet.’ But I realized there’s a reason why: because it’s one of the most beautiful plays ever written.”

Hussey, who played Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s iconic 1968 film, auditioned hundreds of 15-year-old young women for the role. “There were 800 girls in London alone. And that’s not counting the girls he had seen in America, wherever else,” she told the Folger Shakespeare Library. But Zeffirelli could sense that Hussey and Leonard Whiting, the eventual Romeo to her Juliet, had something, and he paired them together on Day 1.

“He paired different people with different people. But he said, ‘Leonard, Olivia. The two of you. Yes. I like that. Yes.’ And so, we only auditioned with each other,” she explained. And as Whiting told Variety, their genuine chemistry likely won them their roles. “I just saw her. They say you can’t believe in love at first sight, but you can because I thought she was just absolutely scrummy, like a really big cream cake,” he said. He added that, while a good actor can supposedly “act anything,” you “can’t act love and desire.” “[That’s] why when people go and see the movie, they’re quite charmed because they can actually see they fancied each other—if you know what I mean.”

Courtesy Paramount Pictures

From Stages on the Sound to California Shakespeare Company to Plague Mask Players, numerous theater groups turn to Backstage to cast productions of “Romeo and Juliet.” Here are the companies that are looking to cast Juliet in the coming months:

• AllCasting, a theater group in Carmel, Indiana, now seeks local talent for its upcoming production of “Romeo and Juliet.” Applications are open, with rehearsals taking place from Jan. 2–Feb. 8, 2024, in preparation for the show’s run from Feb. 9–24, 2024.
• The Theatre School @ North Coast Rep also has “Romeo and Juliet” on its calendar for 2024. Auditions are open to students age 12–19 and adults age 19 and older. The company aims to pair a half-cast of professional adult actors with a half-cast of students. Auditions take place on Nov. 28 and 29, 2023, with callbacks scheduled for Nov. 30. Performances run from March–May 2024.
• As for Broadway’s “& Juliet” casting opportunities, the production sought talent with Backstage in July and October. According to our notices, they were casting Equity actors for chorus parts and possible replacements of principal roles. They aren’t currently casting, but you can check our main casting page for new audition opportunities as they become available. 

For more audition advice for getting cast in a Shakespeare production, check out our complete guide to performing Shakespeare and this list of the best monologues.

Igor Bulgarin/Shutterstock

Use auditions to hone your craft: Claire Danes, who played Juliet in Baz Luhrmann’s modern retelling of Shakespeare’s work in 1996, has decades of experience. But as she has noted, you should use every opportunity as a chance to practice and learn, even if what you’re auditioning for doesn’t work out: “You have to be really present and really open and really vulnerable and really take a risk. That’s the only way you can surprise yourself as a performer and surprise an audience,” she told us. 

“We don’t have a studio as actors,” she said. “Turn [auditions] into your studio. It’s just a place where you’re working your thing out. And you have an audience, which is helpful, and there are some stakes, which is also helpful. But that gives you an objective that’s different from just booking the job, and that reads as confidence, which is also going to help you.”

Focus on the truth in your performance: As Rashad told us, many people get caught up in the glitz and glamour of the Hollywood lifestyle. “[My mother] took me everywhere when I was little, so I got to witness the work…from rehearsal to opening night. It really affected my work ethic at a young age. It wasn’t just all fun.”

“I think the biggest thing that I always learn from my mother is acting can be about pretending or it can be about finding the truth,” she said. “I choose to find the truth in every character. As long as you never go astray from that, you’ve got it. Acting, while it may not always feel easy, is very simple. It’s not complex. It can be hard to do, the same way meditating can be hard to do, but it’s very simple.”

Do your best and leave with no regrets: As principal dancer for the Royal Ballet, Francesca Hayward brought Juliet beautifully to life onstage in London in 2020. Hayward understands the pressures of performing on a grand scale and has learned that you can do no more than your best.

"I know what I am capable of achieving, and as long as I know that that was the best I could do in that very moment, then I won’t have any regrets walking away from it,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. "Perfectionism is concentrating on an ideal that doesn't exist. I will never have a perfect show,” she continued. “It's more the feeling that I get from it—that I can walk away from the stage and know that I handled the situation really well. That I let the best of me come out.”

After all, as Hayward told Grazia, “We don’t fall into this career on a whim. This is people’s blood, sweat, and tears, literally. I feel very passionate about it because we don’t do this for the money. We do this to create something and tell stories and help other people connect with that in a meaningful way.”