Movie Casting: Why Unknown Actors Are A Safe Bet

Movie casting can be a tricky business, and unknown actors can actually be beneficial.

If you take a look at some of the most well-received movies on the acting scale, you’ll notice that some of the best acting comes from actors who haven’t been around the block yet. The Star Trek reboot used mostly unknown actors and some who weren’t well-known outside their usual genres. Out of the entire cast, only a handful had been in big movies before. Simon Pegg, John Cho, and Karl Urban were the only ones of the main cast who had been in other big movies.

If you’re wondering where you’d heard their names before, Simon Pegg had been in Shawn Of The Dead and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. John Cho is Harold in the Harold And Kumar films, and Karl Urban was the main villain in Chronicles Of Riddick and its upcoming sequel Riddick.

Since Leonard Nimoy only had a cameo role, he doesn’t count as a main actor in this case.

When your movie casting puts major actors in the important roles, you run the risk of them hamming it up.

Lord Of The Rings is another good example of using lesser known actors, as was the Harry Potter series. Most of the main characters were portrayed by actors and actresses we’d barely heard of, and it worked. Lesser known actors have more to prove and they try harder.

Better known actors can ruin the film if you let them. Tom Cruise is a brilliant actor, but he will let his ego get in the way of the story, and the same with Will Smith. Arnold Schwarzenegger is an energetic presence, but he can never seem to take a back seat. Christian Bale, though another brilliant actor, has been known to get in fights with prop workers. Big names means big egos. Lesser known actors will try harder to work with you and probably give you a better performance on the side.

Another problem with big name actors in movie casting is something that Joss Whedon recently had to deal with. They end up refusing to work if you don’t pay them more than the outrageous amount they already earned before. We almost didn’t have Avengers: Age Of Ultron due to contract negotiations revealing too many big heads with big demands.

What do you think of movie casting? Should the unknown actors be given the chance more often?

[images via DFree / Shutterstock.com, s_bukley / Shutterstock.com]