I had a brilliant drama teacher while I was at Roland Park: Ann Mainolfi. But the school was mostly rich in academics. It wasn't like I was prepping myself for a life in acting. There, you prepped yourself to have a stable future. The school's piece de resistance is college prep - it didn't teach you how to audition for a TV show.
I find I often do my best work when I'm not attached to the outcome of the audition.
I think the reason why I'm an actress is because I got hooked on the feeling of studying for an audition, going to the audition, and then getting that phone call.
I got an agent when I needed one, when I had a contract negotiation for the first time. I was doing the Second City E.T.C., and I got invited to audition for the last season, it turns out, of 'In Living Color.'
When you get called to come in and audition for Tarantino, it's incredibly exciting.
Personally, I need to learn every word on the page before I go in and audition. I have not mastered the skill of holding pages in my hand and acting with pages in my hand. I find that every time I have to look at the page it takes me completely out of the scene.
I was a football player at college and dislocated my thumb. I was out for a bit and passed the theatre and saw some lovely drama students walking into an audition for 'Much Ado About Nothing' and thought: 'That's what I'll do when I recover.' I joined that production and was hooked.
It's funny because the perception is that the typical 'X Factor' contestant is the person who's just working 9 to 5 and just decides to one day go and audition. So yeah, for me, it was a very different story.
I remember my very first audition for a film. I was in Seattle. They were taping the session, and I just went crazy. The director finally said, 'Zoe, what are you doing? The camera's right here. Just talk to me.' And it took that director saying that to me to change everything.
I've been fortunate in my career, but, yes, there have been many times when I have been told my audition has been cancelled because they're only going to see white people.
Investment banks started recruiting at Harvard back in the day, and they'd fly me down to New York City and I was so poor so I would take advantage of the free flight, the per diem, the hotel. And then I would go audition for stuff.
I audition for almost every role. I get into auditions even when I am just producing a film. Not that someone would fire me, but I keep trying various tests and keep working till I learn the job.
As a boy soprano in the high school choir, I later sang a solo during the carol service at Canterbury Cathedral, but I was too young to secure the Freddy Eynsford-Hill role in our production of 'My Fair Lady' - and far too timid to have thought to audition for it.
It can't be overstated how wonderful it is not to have to audition any more. Any actor will tell you, it's like Christmas.
In high school, I did some musicals, but I never took acting until college. I was studying opera, classical voice, and a speech teacher asked me to audition for this play, and I got the lead.
When you audition for 'Quantico,' they have the academy application manual and maps of the base in the waiting room. So right from the start, they have you doing research, which I thought was cool.
I wish I knew that when I go in for an audition and I don't get the part, it actually doesn't have to do with me on a personal level.
After high school I was going to be an architect. In fact, I was studying to be an architect when the audition for 'The Monkees' came along.
My attitude goes back to my childhood. I used to audition for theatrical roles, and you can't stand out in a room full of ambitious eight-year-old girls by acting the wallflower. I realised then that I couldn't do things half-heartedly.
I've always wanted to be a recognized singer and just - just so people can hear my music - and thought, you know, look how many people watch 'American Idol.' Why not audition, you know?
At this point, I've really failed at a lot of things. It's nice to be able to say that, in a way. I've failed at music. I've failed at dance. And acting - there have been times when I went out and read lines to audition for acting parts. I believe that if anybody wrangled together those audition tapes, it would be pretty hysterically funny.
I've actually been given a great gift. When I walk into an audition with a director, I'm carrying no baggage. They haven't seen me in anything, even though I've done nine films.
My mum sent me to an open audition for 'Notes On A Scandal' so I could see quite how many other girls wanted to do this. And I queued up, and I got the job. That was my first-ever audition, and my second was 'Atonement.'
I'd say you have to be really committed to the field, show up for every audition and to be aware that very few make it in this field.
I was in a band till I was about 17; then I went to television, and I spent seven years doing that. When I came to Seattle, I started to audition for things. The passion's always there, and that's what's been the hard thing: to fit that passion into a normal life. You can't do it. You can't have a normal life and pursue this dream.
I think the process of 'SNL' is still pretty formal. You make an audition tape, your agent sends it in, they watch people's tapes, and then they invite people to perform at a comedy club in Los Angeles or New York. But I don't know how much actual scouting they do online.
I go through periods where I don't shop at all, and then I go crazy and buy everything in sight. I never know what to wear, and I'm at my worst before an audition. I pull everything out of the closet, throw it on my bed. I'll get entirely dressed and then take it all off again until I'm in a kind of frenzy.
I just kind of feel like it's my choice to do what I want to do. And my agent, he's totally with it. He tells me, 'You can turn down any audition you don't want to.'
I was once up for a part, and the male star was also producing the movie. They were talking about meeting with him or having an audition with him, and then we get the message, 'He wants to have dinner with you.' I said, 'Is that the audition, or is it that he just wants to have dinner with me?'
'Donnie Darko' was my first audition ever! It opened my eyes to the possibilities within camera work.
I was living in Evanston, Illinois and I was taking theater classes down the street, and our theater school was kind of affiliated with an agency, and so I went on one audition for whatever that movie was, 'My Stepmother is an Alien' or whatever it was, and 'Roseanne' was my second audition.
I had an audition where Josh Brolin was pelting me with his personality. I didn't get the part.
I came to New York when I was eighteen years old, and the first audition that I ever went to was this huge cattle call at the Equity building where I had gone two days earlier to sign up - I didn't have an agent or anything. It was for 'Chicago.' There were probably three hundred people there.
'One Tree Hill' was my very first television audition; it was a fairytale. I feel really lucky to have that level of success right out of the gate.
When I graduated from high school, I had artistic and academic scholarships, and I was trying to figure out what to do. I decided to audition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Juilliard and the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney, Australia.
It kind of pays off to try your best at every audition; you never know what can happen. You can get a hundred nos, but if you just get one yes, it can change your life.
