Aurora native casts all those TV, movie 'background actors'

Ever look at a huge crowd scene in a movie or on a TV show and wonder, how did the filmmakers get all these people together and have them act just like a crowd of regular people?

Nobody does.

"When you watch a TV show or movie and you see all these people walking around in crowd scenes, you don't think about them," casting director Brandi Hawkins said. "You forget where the dead body on the ground comes from. All the people driving by in cars. People surfboarding on the ocean. Filmmakers can't just go to a beach and start filming! We have to create the whole scene with all those people."

That's what Hawkins, an Aurora native, does. She has cast an impressive roster of motion pictures and television shows, including "Inception," "Twilight," "Zombieland," "Drive," "The Boy Next Door" and "Think Like a Man, Too." She cast Netflix's "Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp," which premiered last week, and MTV's horror series "Scream," which premiered last month.

But she doesn't cast the big stars. She casts all those other actors we might call "extras."

"We've gone away from that word in recent years," Hawkins told us. "We call them 'background actors.' They're all actors. Everybody on the set is an actor playing a role, even if it's a pedestrian. If you do a good job of picking actors to blend in to a scene, you forget they're actors."

Hawkins never dreamed of one day becoming a Hollywood casting director. She had her heart set on a career as a performer.

After graduating West Aurora High School, she headed to Drake University in Iowa to be a music major. She never graduated.

"I really wanted to perform, and I didn't think a degree was really what I needed," she confessed. "It was more the training and figuring out what I wanted to do. But at some point, I figured I didn't want to go into teaching. I just wanted to sing."

Fate, in the form of her older sister Stacy, had other plans.

Stacy went to study film at Chapman University, a stone's throw away from Disneyland. Hawkins went to help her sister complete a student movie. Then, when her sister attended the Cannes Film Festival in France, Hawkins stayed in her apartment and nabbed a job at Universal Studios as a tour guide.

That led to a position at the studio's human resources department where Hawkins recruited employees to work in the food service and merchandising sectors.

One small promotion later, Hawkins began hiring tour guides and other positions.

Then, a friend tipped her off about jobs in Central Casting.

"I first thought I could get back into performing in this job," she said. "When I saw what the casting directors did, I decided I would rather be on that side of the glass."

Hawkins began as a casting assistant. She quickly moved up to casting director.

"The job was still fun and creative, and I got to meet a lot of people," she said. "Now, instead of finding the right cashier for a store, it was finding the right actor for the right role. That was really cool."

No two projects have the same requirements, which keeps the job fresh and challenging, she said.

"Some things you would think might be challenging aren't, and other things you wouldn't think would be challenging are," she reported.

Like what?

"Sometimes, finding the right people to be restaurant patrons is harder than finding a juggler or a circus performer," she said.

Major stars are cast at the beginning of projects. Background actors get cast daily.

"We're working on the project every day, booking actors for the next day, casting every scene every day for the duration of the entire project," Hawkins said. "It's a lot of responsibility, which can be scary, but it's also a lot of fun."

Period projects can be the toughest, she reported.

"One day, (on the set of the to-be-released jazz musician biopic 'Nina') I had to have one group of actors go from the 1960s to the 1990s. In the morning, they were 1960s. In the evening, they were 1990s. Their hair had to work in both time periods. Wardrobe had to work in both time periods. That was one challenging day!"

For the Bruce Willis thriller "Surrogates" - all about humans being replaced by better versions of themselves - Hawkins had an abnormally large challenge.

"The background had to be populated by all these perfect, flawless people walking around as pedestrians," she said. "The background actors had to set the movie's tone. So we found all these models, perfect-looking people. That made the movie work."

Hawkins said she feels blessed to have a perfect job, a perfect dog (a Pekingese mix) and a perfect apartment.

She can cast actors for scenes in the street all the way to upscale high-society balls because, she said, "I can identify with all those people."

"When I walk into a room, everyone knows it. I'm loud, and I'm funny, and I will say just about anything. And I'm lucky to be in a work environment where I can be myself and be free. The worst thing to be is boring."

- Dann Gire

• Dann Gire and Jamie Sotonoff are looking for suburbanites who've established themselves in showbiz. If you know someone with an interesting story, write them at dgire@dailyherald.com and jsotonoff@dailyherald.com.

Mentor: Mom, who got college degree at 69

Mentors? Aurora native and Hollywood casting director Brandi Hawkins has had a few.

“But the person who influenced me the most is my mom,” she said. “She grew up in the very poor area of Chicago. She worked in factories and did odd jobs to support her family.”

But that’s not all.

“She went back to high school when I was in junior high and got her diploma.”

That’s not all, either.

“Then she enrolled at night school to get her real estate license. She ran a successful real estate business, Then she became the first African- American female president of the Aurora Association of Realtors.”

Still more.

“She eventually retired, then started taking college classes. Two years ago, I got a call from her saying she was graduating college with a degree in education.”

Lorraine Hawkins was 69.

“She taught me to go for what I want to do, to work hard to get it,” Brandi Hawkins said. “She told me if you want to do it, you can do it. Who would have thought she would graduate college at 69? But she did it. That was pretty cool.”