Posted on August 27, 2016 by Bernadette Nason

I’m always thankful to be invited to audition, even if I end up horribly disappointed, which comes with the territory and can break a heart. I was therefore pretty chuffed last week when I was blessed with two auditions.

The movie audition went really well, I judged. I understood my character and found myself “in the zone.” The casting director seemed genuinely pleased. The director was also there, though I felt as if he took one look at me and knew I wasn’t what he wanted. Mind you, I often feel that way. Still, I made him laugh—it’s a comedy so that’s a good thing—and when I did the scene again after some direction, he laughed even harder. The casting director was grinning all over her face—I’ve always liked her, and I like her even more now. I just received word that I have a callback, and I’m happy as a sand-boy, even though the shoot isn’t until January 2017, and everything may change before then.

The day before, however, I auditioned for a Texas Lottery commercial, and that was a whole other ballgame, as they say here. The character description was the sort this actress dreads: Woman, 45-50, redhead, attractive, curvy, sexy—good-looking (kind of Christina Hendricks type).

Okay, well, I’m a woman and I’m a red-head. With enough makeup (and imagination), I can scrape by as “attractive” and “good-looking,” and perhaps, from a distance, even as 45-50. But, honey, I ain’t curvy or sexy and I sure as doggone it, don’t look like Christina Hendricks, the actress from “Mad Men,” who is curvy and sexy and gorgeous with beaucoup de bosom, and is 41, by the way. So that’s only two definites out of—how many descriptors?—seven, if you include “good looking” and eight, if you include “Christina Hendricks type.”

I trowel on the “You too can look half your age” pancake makeup, and shoehorn myself into foundation garments a size too small, so as to lift everything up and make it look a bit “fuller.” Alas, I’m squeezing out all the wrong body parts. Although I’m generally considered skinny, I’ve created a sizeable midriff bulge and it’s getting more of an airing than I’d like. I throw on a jacket to cover this disaster, but then, of course, I have to park half a mile away from the casting director’s office, and walk several blocks in mid-afternoon sunshine/humidity—no joke in August in Austin, Texas—so that I’m sopping with sweat by the time I arrive, and my artfully-applied “I’m praying for a miracle” makeup is dripping off my chin like batter.

I walk in, and I’m the ONLY ONE CLOSE TO THE SUGGESTED AGE. The other females are late twenties/early thirties, at the oldest. And they’re equipped with the all the sexy, curvy accoutrements: tight skirts, low cut blouses, stiletto shoes, long red hair, scarlet lips, and glorious bazoombas that could start wars. A glance at the young man running the whole shebang, who is in his late twenties/early thirties himself, makes me wonder if perhaps Christina Hendricks strikes him as “45-50.”

What else could I do? After slating for the camera, I acted up a storm and gave the young man a master class in improv and a fit of the giggles, but honestly, I don’t think he was looking for an actress. No callback there, I’m afraid, and no surprises either.

Woman, Redhead: two out of eight ain’t bad