Margery Simkin

Explicit content warning

06/30/22 • 58 min

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Whatever makes an actor right for a role, Margery Simkin knows it when she sees it. She’s the casting director behind some of the most iconic original films and Hollywood characters from the last fifty years, including TOP GUN, FIELD OF DREAMS and BEVERLY HILLS COP, plus the more recent hits ERIN BROKOVICH and AVATAR, and one of our favorite indies, BEAUTIFUL GIRLS. In our season finale episode, Margery shares some trade secrets from her forty+ year career, debunks a few casting myths, and sums up her job as a mix of discernment, tenacity and serendipity: “I love problem solving... and I guess I’m arrogant enough to think I get it right a lot of the time! It’s just fun.”

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Joe Pantoliano

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Joe Pantoliano has the secret to immortality: work constantly for decades despite dyslexia and depression to become a beloved character actor who plays unforgettable roles in iconic movies. Simple as that. You know him from RISKY BUSINESS, THE GOONIES, MIDNIGHT RUN, EMPIRE OF THE SUN, MEMENTO, THE FUGITIVE and THE MATRIX to name only a few. (He’s got “another 180 that nobody’s ever heard of!”) Then there was that Emmy he won for playing a despicable mob captain on two seasons of The Sopranos. Joe cut and ran from his native New Jersey after high school and turned his own fortunes in Hollywood by making every character memorable: “I never had the luxury of saying I made it, hey I’m here. Each job was the last job, then I had to get the next one.”