How Will the Soon-to-Be Oscar for Casting Work? Let This Year’s Films Explain.
Starting with 2025 movies, the Academy will begin recognizing Achievement in Casting in its annual awards. But will it be a celebration of finding a diamond in the rough, or assembling an all-star group? What took so long for this addition? And what will it add to the ceremony overall?
When the Casting Society of America gets together Thursday to hold its 39th Artios Awards, the champagne will likely bubbleth over. The annual honors—whose name refers to a Greek word signifying “perfectly fitted”—have long recognized the contributions of casting professionals across the performing arts, but this year, those pros have an extra reason to be buzzing. In February, it was announced that the big dog Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is making the rare move of adding a new Oscars category, Achievement in Casting, for films released beginning in 2025. Which means it won’t be long before we can all watch as the people who pick the people we all watch contend not only for an Artios, but for a long-deserved Oscar.
Such a decision has been a long, hard time coming. Of the 23 extant Oscar categories, just two were implemented after 1948: Best Makeup and Hairstyling (in 1981) and Best Animated Feature Film (in 2001). Casting had been considered for addition during the ’90s but was ultimately voted down. Only in 2013 did the Academy even establish a casting guild within its membership. And only once, in 2016, has an honorary Oscar been given to a casting director, the late, great Lynn Stalmaster, who cast films ranging from The Graduate to Deliverance. The prominence of this job has long been overshadowed, but soon it will be cast (sorry, sorry) in a newer, brighter light.
While this change won’t take place in time for this year’s Oscars ceremony on Sunday night, that doesn’t have to stop us from engaging in a time-honored cinematic tradition: prognosticating about what the Academy will want out of this award, and about how its members will actually vote. And this year’s crop of movies makes for a fun and illustrative hypothetical case study in that regard.
From the enormity of the oh wow, HE’S in it too?! ensemble of Oppenheimer to the studiously, coldly mundane characters of The Zone of Interest; from the deliberate mass whimsy of Barbie to the no-one-else-could-have-done-it precision of The Holdovers, this year’s finest films were buoyed, as ever, by the people who cast them, those soulful and skillful discerners who sit thanklessly in sparse rooms and tell hopefuls: “thanks so much for coming in; next.” For that, we salute them. And with that in mind, let’s examine how this new category might help shake up the stodgy Oscars (or not!) and the questions we’ll be asking and hearing along the way.
What took so long?
The 2013 documentary Casting By, about the life and times of trailblazing casting director Marion Dougherty, gives an overview of the way casting wound up sidelined from Hollywood’s biggest night—and then stayed there for so long.
During the first half of the 20th century, the dominant moviemaking paradigm was the big, restrictive studio system. Actors generally weren’t roving free agents auditioning all over town for roles, but rather contracted in-house players who were mostly mixed and matched among themselves at the behest of executives and directors. (“Clint continues to be one of the most conscientious boys we have ever had in our roster of contract players,” reads one representative studio note shown in the film, about a young Clint Eastwood.) Within this system, third-party casting agents didn’t have much room to operate or even exist, and as new categories were added to the Oscars, that was not one of them.
But even as the old system collapsed throughout the 1950s and people like Dougherty were able to gain industry esteem, little changed. Dougherty may have been responsible for the huge decision to attach Dustin Hoffman and a then-little-known Jon Voight to Midnight Cowboy, for example, but a dispute with the film’s director meant she was never credited. In the ’90s, the effort to add casting to the Oscars fell apart over (concern-trolly) worries that it would be too confusing to know who to credit for decisions: the stakeholders in the process, after all, ranged from meddling execs to aggro agents to buck-stops-here directors—all in addition to the casting pros themselves.
By the 21st century, the idea of casting recognition still rankled influential members of the directors community, who felt that any acclaim for standout ensembles ought to accrue to whomever directed the film. In Casted By, a smirking Taylor Hackford—then the head of the Directors Guild of America—demonstrated the tenor of the gatekeeping. He argued that even the very title of a “casting director” was an affront, saying, “the reality is you’re not a director. And we take exception to being called a director. You’re a casting person—casting by—but I do not call them directors, because they’re not.” (He would later soften his remarks.)
One so-called casting person later deemed Hackford’s comments “evil and reductive.” They certainly do help explain why it took so long for casting to be recognized individually.
So what’s the relationship like between directors and casting directors now?
It seems to be stronger, largely because so many exemplary auteurs have made it clear that they value close collaboration. Several of the casting directors behind this year’s crop of Best Picture nominees exemplify the kind of rich, longtime partnerships that can emerge between them and directors. John Papsidera has been part of Christopher Nolan’s inner creative circle for the past quarter-century, having worked on projects from Memento to this year’s Oscar front-runner, Oppenheimer. “In a film with so many different faces, each one had to be distinctive and credible,” Nolan said in the studio’s production notes. “So, the breadth of the ensemble that [Papsidera] put together is a huge feature of the film.”
Ellen Chenoweth, who worked on Past Lives, can frequently be found repeat-collaborating with other directors ranging from the Coen brothers to Barry Levinson. And Ellen Lewis, who helped cast Killers of the Flower Moon—a job that included encouraging Martin Scorsese to check out Best Actress nominee Lily Gladstone in an earlier indie film, and also hosting an open casting call in conjunction with the Osage Nation that drew thousands of hopefuls—has worked closely with Scorsese since 1989. The casting director’s job is ultimately part therapist, part diviner, part negotiator, part coach, which is why their work is so all-important.
“More than 90 percent of directing is the right casting,” said Scorsese in Casted By, “so you learn to trust your casting director.” The smart ones do, anyway.
What’s the more exemplary feat of casting: finding a diamond in the rough, or assembling a star-studded ensemble? Signing that one unforgettable lead, or weaving a rich tapestry of supporting roles?
Expect these sorts of questions to become the unavoidable debates of this category, akin to the annual philosophical debates we see in the sporting world. Like, should the “valuable” in Most Valuable Player translate to “most talented” OR “most idiosyncratically irreplaceable”? Should a Coach of the Year award go to the unexpected rando who helps some quirky group of strivers rise to a playoff 8-seed OR to the perennial trusted leader who can juggle a bunch of All-Star egos en route to a dynasty?
In other words, what type of work will ultimately be more attractive to Academy voters? In terms of this year’s films, The Holdovers has its glorious unearthing of Dominic Sessa from a boarding school campus and its meaty slugging percentage of Oscar noms, with nods for Best Actor (Paul Giamatti) and Best Supporting Actress (Da’Vine Joy Randolph). Barbie has a big-name cast as boldly-yet-delicately stacked as one of film’s titular (sorry, SORRY!!!) dolls. Killers of the Flower Moon, meanwhile, required a careful mix of both recognizable faces and newbies. And Past Lives expertly selected both the kid and the grown-up versions of its lovelorn leads.
The underrated Chilean-soccer-team-plane-crash film Society of the Snow was notable for all the careful attention paid to its cast of young, untrained talent. The probably-properly-rated Saltburn had crackling chemistry and charisma among its ensemble cast, which helped distract from the dark oddities of its script. The Zone of Interest featured the wondrous Sandra Hüller. And Anatomy of a Fall also featured the wondrous Sandra Hüller.
In an exhaustive, quantitative-and-qualitative analysis in The Hollywood Reporter, awards aficionado Ben Zauzmer recently sought patterns in past Oscar (and other award shows) nominees and winners to try to go back in time to determine who might have won a little gold man for casting over the years. His inputs incorporated categories like “outstanding performance by a cast” at the SAG Awards (not quite castING, but we do what we can for science) and smaller-sample-size additions like the BAFTA award for casting, which was added in 2020.
His conclusions included the straightforward (like 1987’s powerhouse Cher/young Nicolas Cage collab Moonstruck) and the more controversial (Gosford Park over Lord of the Rings!) and, most of all, demonstrated that there will never be one right answer to any of these questions. Nor should there be! If the Oscars have ever really been about one thing, it’s the fine art of argument. The casting directors, the actors, the studios—all anyone is trying to do, at the end of the day, is persuade.
What casting decision did Christopher Nolan say is one of the “most consequential casting decisions that’s ever been made in the history of the movie business”?
That would be Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, a role that helped kick-start not just the Iron Man franchise but the whole expansive and lucrative Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now, sure, Nolan may just be pumping up his guy a little bit here—RDJ also happens to be the top contender this year for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Nolan’s Oppenheimer—but the remark brings up a fun philosophical exercise when it comes to the Academy Awards.
It has long been the passionate argument of Ringer founder Bill Simmons that it would be illuminating to have some sort of five-year-retrospective Oscars—awards that might better highlight films of a given year that had extra cultural staying power. The growers instead of the showers; the Get Out or Lady Bird instead of The Shape of Water. I heartily agree, and would add that if any version of this were to happen (a girl can dream!) perhaps the casting category, on a rolling 10-year basis, would be an ideal place to start. Picture one of those dominos memes: Lewis hips Scorsese to a little-known Aussie beauty named Margot Robbie for 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street, yada yada yada, now Barbie is a billion-dollar behemoth. I’d vote for that.
Will this award become a consolation prize, or can it thrive as a niche celebration?
Probably a bit of both. The Oscars tend to hand out awards in clumps, sometimes for good reason—if a film is truly outstanding, it feels logical for it to win on multiple fronts. And in these cases, there’s no real reason for voters not to just go ahead and throw “Achievement in Casting” on top of an already Scrooge McDuck–style golden heap. Take this year’s Oppenheimer, for example: it’s currently a front-runner in Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor. And at the SAG Awards, it won best ensemble. So wouldn’t it sort of make sense—albeit be a little bit boring—for it to get the casting nod from the Academy, too?
On the other hand, that last part might suggest another route for the award: a make-good in the absence of other accolades. This year, for example, it could be an easy consolation prize to give Barbie or Killers of the Flower Moon. In years past, one can imagine it as a soothing salve to the teams behind films like 1985’s The Color Purple or 2010’s True Grit, which earned 11 and 10 Oscar noms, respectively, but took home zero prizes.
But there’s good reason to think that the prize will wind up actually being stranger, and more interesting, in its deployment. That’s because, while nearly 10,000 Academy members can vote on the final awards, it’ll be the 160-person casting directors branch that chooses the award’s initial list of nominations. And that’s where the fun can be had. By having these actual industry specialists laud their peers—your favorite casting directors’ favorite casting directors!—the door will be opened for respect to be given to the ambitious, the obscure, the apex of auditionspace. Well, theoretically. In the years since the BAFTAs started giving out a casting award, winners have included the deserving West Side Story and the confusing Joker.
In one IndieWire interview with casting directors about what they considered to be the best-cast films of the year, the answers did include the usual suspects, like (this year’s BAFTA winner) The Holdovers and Past Lives, but they also included so much more, like May December (“in a way, it is a movie about casting”—true!); How to Have Sex (“a vital chemistry”); the Oscar-snubbed Ferrari (“supporting cast bring vividness and depth”); and All of Us Strangers (“everything and nothing feels real”). OK, and Saltburn too.
What can this bring to the Oscars?
To the grumps out there, the answer is: an even more interminable running time. But one of the worst-case scenarios for this award, as I see it, is if we don’t wind up being able to see it much at all. Given the Oscars’ already-existing reputation for overstaying its welcome with bloated, oddly-paced shows that run for hours yet also effectively include novelty canes yanking people offstage by the neck, it’s possible this category could be relegated to the purgatory of brief, edited, pre-recorded snippets. This would be a shame, and a rude welcome.
Instead, it would be fun if the Oscars truly choose to highlight the narratives that are so inherent to this category. This is a chance to enhance the storytelling around what a successful and fruitful creative process can look like. Casting directors, by and large, are elite straight shooters who have endless yarns to spin about people and places and visions and surprises and battles. Who better to be up for chatting during For Your Consideration campaigns?
Casting directors are also some of the people best positioned to remind the world that actors are human, and that even the biggest stars are subject to near-constant rejection. A cursed part of the job must be that everyone always wants to ask who didn’t get the part, but it’s easy to understand the impulse: Casting what-ifs inspire a sense of existential, butterfly-effect wonder at all the alternative universes we could have found ourselves living in. Such as a Barbie-land where various Kens are played by Bowen Yang/Ben Platt/Dan Levy! Or a Greenbow, Alabama, in which Forrest Gump is … John Travolta?
These stories are almost always fascinating, whether they are the kind that involve roles written with actors specifically, preemptively in mind (like Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer, Robbie in Barbie, or Leo in so many things) or the kind that feel like beautiful cosmic serendipity. (One of my favorite anecdotes in Casting By is how the Honolulu-born Bette Midler used her check from being an extra in Hawaii to finally achieve her dream of moving, starry-eyed, to New York.)
It takes the collision of money and power and a little bit of moxie and shoe leather to bring the world the goods, and the greats. And the industry legends who make it happen, from Allison Jones to Francine Maisler, from Juliet Taylor to Avy Kaufman, are exactly who we ought to (and will) be celebrating.
What’s next?
We wait patiently for the discourse to begin. (So far reported 2025 releases include a Michael Jackson biopic and an untitled Jordan Peele work.) And while we’re waiting, we might as well take up a new cause: justice for the stuntpeople!!
Just like their casting director brethren, these brave men and women have been essential to the world of cinema for as long as anyone can remember. (Just ask Mission:Impossible–Dead Reckoning Part One’s Tom Cruise, who has dabbled in both realms.) They have also been rejected by the Academy numerous times over the years for Oscars inclusion, despite clearly being a motion picture art and a science. Still, who knows, perhaps something new is on the horizon. If the long-beleaguered casting directors can finally see their hard, strange work properly appreciated, maybe there’s hope for the rest of us yet.
