Casting call anxiety – Michael Bofshever on auditioning

Whether you get cast or not is dependent upon things that are totally out of your control. For example, the way an actor may have experienced this is, they were running late for an audition, or just got there in the nick of time and just does it. Or you get into an audition and your feeling sick and you couldn’t care about anything other than you can’t wait to go back to your house and get into bed. And what you’ve done is given up the burden of trying to get the job. I was listening to Felicity Huffman, who won an Emmy for Desperate Housewives, and she talked about her audition for the role and told the story that she was so rattled because her kid at home were all over the place. When she got to the audition she was a mess and late and all of that stuff. She just went in and auditioned because she had to go back and deal with her kid back at the house. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. And many actors, whether they verbalize it in those terms or not, have found they’ve gotten work because of that.