Serving Larchmont Village, Hancock Park, and the Greater Wilshire neighborhoods of Los Angeles since 2011.

Heidi Levitt: Casting Genius Creates a Genie

Brookside resident Heidi Levitt has been in the casting business for 20 years finding actors for films such as JFK, Natural Born Killers and most recently The Artist, the circa 1920s silent film getting quite an Oscar buzz. There is a wonderful article about Levitt casting The Artist in Backstage magazine online.

In casting some 80 roles for The Artist, Levitt used some local talent including Ed Lauter as the Butler, Adria Tennor as Zimmer’s Secretary, Wylie Pickett who played a Guard, and Stephen Mendillo as a Set Assistant. So now, besides seeing the familiar street scenes we noted in an earlier Buzz posting, you can also point out familiar local faces you see walking down Larchmont or at the local Trader Joes.

For Levitt, casting has always been her “passion and the the job I love to do.” But with film production down and film budgets diving along with them, Levitt has taken on a new enterprise to reach actors in the digital age: the Actor Genie App.

Created for the iPhone and Android, Actor Genie App (on iTunes)  works much like the weekly job report once offered by the trades, and hopes to be the “Go To – 411 Directory” for valuable, up-to-the-minute information for actors. This means actors can search in real time what’s casting, who’s casting it, what roles are offered and where. It’ll save actors a tremendous amount of time, and help them keep their own agents on their toes.

Recent college graduate David Lowe, who grew up on Beachwood Drive, has moved back into the area and is working at Heidi Levitt Casting as a Casting Associate and in developing the Actor Genie. David shared the following fun new advertisement for the Actor Genie with the Buzz. 

 

 

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Julie Grist
Julie Grist
Julie co-founded the Larchmont Buzz with fellow buzzer Mary Hawley in 2011 and served as Editor, Publisher and writer for the hive for many years until the sale of the Buzz in August 2015. She is still circling the hive as an occasional writer.

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