Amateurish? That can be a good thing

Baz Luhrmann, writer-director of the adventure epic “Australia,” calls the decision his “biggest risk -- by far, the biggest risk -- in a film in which every risk was big.”

Speaking from Rome, where he was premiering the $130-million historic action romance, which stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, Luhrmann wasn’t talking about any of the set pieces that lend “Australia” its larger-than-life scope and sweep. He wasn’t referring to the movie’s cattle stampedes, its re-creations of World War II bombing raids, or even the movie’s attempt to combine bodice-ripping romance with period western while tackling issues of social injustice.

No. Luhrmann’s “risk” was casting Brandon Walters, who had never acted before, to portray Nullah, a central character around whom much of “Australia” is plotted and who also provides the movie’s voice-over narration.

“I’m going to go hang the whole movie on an 11-year-old boy?” Luhrmann said, recalling the surprise at his decision among executives at the movie’s distributor, 20th Century Fox. “We could have had a wholesale rejection. Really, there was a lot of concern about it. A lot of, ‘That’s madness.’ The studio doesn’t ever ultimately battle me on anything. But after the first thousand boys we auditioned, they began to get nervous.”

Turns out Luhrmann is hardly the only prestigious filmmaker gambling on amateur talent these days. Whether in pursuit of greater authenticity, out of sheer necessity or in the blithe spirit of stunt casting, a number of this season’s more high-profile films feature novice actors in leading roles. A boisterous pack of youngsters bring a hard-to-fake street verisimilitude to one of the year’s best-reviewed films, “Slumdog Millionaire” (which came out last month). And director-star Clint Eastwood hired a cast of Hmong American teenagers, all but one of whom had never acted before, to appear with him in the provocative ethnic drama “Gran Torino” (which reached theaters in Los Angeles and New York on Friday).

Some of these movie neophytes were hired after extensive casting calls and nationwide talent searches, while others were simply in the proverbial right place at the right time. What distinguishes this new crop from the rank and file of indie-movie new jacks -- i.e., the kind of untested actors hired because of shoestring budgets more than for the quality of their “work” -- is context.

Cineplex screens have been crowded with amateur actors in independently produced festival winners and European hits such as “Ballast,” “Gomorrah” and “The Class” all year. But nowadays, nonpros are turning up in studio-backed features with substantial budgets and share the screen with bona fide movie stars. In other words, they are nabbing roles in the kind of films usually reserved for established screen names.

“You can use the fragmentary nature of filmmaking hugely to your advantage with inexperienced people,” explained Danny Boyle, director of “Slumdog Millionaire.” “You get a freshness with them that more than compensates for any technicalities you have to teach them. The compensation for freshness and directness easily outweighs any of that.”

Directing gets tricky

“Gran Torino” follows the story of Walt Kowalski (Eastwood), a take-no-bull Korean War vet grappling with a culture clash: His working-class Detroit neighborhood has become populated by Hmong people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group. But when Walt defies his racist tendencies to help out a teenage Hmong neighbor, he’s thrown into conflict with a local street gang. Wanting to cast people from the ethnic group but faced with a relatively scant pool of trained Hmong actors, Eastwood had casting directors conduct open auditions in cities with large Hmong populations, such as Fresno, Detroit and St. Paul, Minn. The movie crew also put out the dragnet with fliers in local high schools, ads in Hmong newspapers and contacts through organizations such as Hmong National Development Inc.

“It’s a very close-knit community,” said “Gran Torino” casting director Ellen Chenoweth. “They heard Clint was doing this movie and realized a lot of people don’t know what Hmong are. They were so eager to have their story told correctly and be involved, they embraced us and were very helpful.”

Around 20 nonprofessional Hmong actors were cast. Minneapolis high school student Bee Vang read about “Gran Torino” on a Hmong Internet discussion board, contacted casting agents and was asked to audition. A novice actor, he was hired to play the movie’s secondary lead, the neighbor Eastwood’s character initially shuns before befriending him.

“It said, ‘No experience necessary’ on the ad,” said Vang, 17. “When the camera first went on, it all came rushing to me: ‘I’m here with Clint Eastwood, American icon.’ It was not only scary, it felt like a dream.”

To hear it from Eastwood, there is a trick to directing amateurs -- literally tricking cast members into giving a realistic performance.

“A lot of times I would be shooting when people didn’t know the camera was on. I would say, ‘Run through it for me, show me what it could look like,’ and then I would signal to roll the cameras,” Eastwood said. “I did that a lot. Sometimes, when you tell someone who is not a professional actor to start acting, they get real stiff. They change everything and think too much.”

Problems, payoffs

Nonprofessional actors have appeared in movies since the dawn of filmmaking. In recent years, amateurs such as Edward Furlong (“Terminator 2”), Brad Renfro (“The Client”) and Jason Statham (“Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”) went from never having acted to being “discovered” to parlaying a shot at fame in a mainstream movie into viable acting careers.

But in the last decade, the trend toward casting novices really gained traction. The success of 2002’s violent Brazilian drama “City of God” (which employed nonprofessional actors to portray boys scrapping for their existence in the slums of Rio de Janeiro and received four Oscar nominations) helped open filmmakers’ minds to untrained actors’ commercial viability.

Add to that the flexibility of shooting on digital video -- with which recording take after take doesn’t waste expensive film -- and you started to see directors taking more casting chances.

After securing a $14-million budget and a distribution deal with Warner Bros. for “Slumdog Millionaire” -- which follows an impoverished street urchin who uses his romantic yearnings and a reservoir of arcane cultural savvy to go the distance on India’s version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” -- Boyle did not set out to cast a troupe of nonprofessional child actors. Or, for that matter, to shoot the first third of the movie in Hindi.

But when Boyle arrived in Mumbai, India, where the romantic drama is set, and began to interview trained actors for the key roles of two orphaned brothers and a young girl from the city’s poorest precinct, he found a certain physical verisimilitude lacking.

“In the morning, we’d be auditioning these middle-class kids who are fast-food eaters,” Boyle said. “And in the afternoon, we’d be going around the slums looking at locations. I’d be looking at the real kids. And they’d be completely physically different. The expression in Britain is ‘wick.’ They’re wiry and quick. Alert. Alive. Survivors.”

In addition to hiring local “fixers” in a number of smaller parts -- and having Freida Pinto, a former model with no prior acting experience, as “Slumdog’s” adult female lead -- the director decided to cast real street children (three 7-year-olds and two 12-year-olds) in the protagonist roles. Which led to further complications.

“The casting director, said, ‘Seven-year olds don’t speak English,’ ” Boyle recalled. “A lot of the slum kids don’t go to school.”

The script was translated into Hindi and shooting commenced. But the studio was less than overjoyed at Boyle’s switcheroo. “Imagine it from a distributor’s point of view,” the director said. “ ‘It’s going to be unwatchable! You’re not going to be able to understand what anybody’s saying!’ But when you’re there, it becomes all about the realism.”

Co-distributors Warner Bros. and Fox Searchlight can’t be unhappy now. After the movie earned the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival and a sweep of ecstatic reviews, earlier this month the National Board of Review picked “Slumdog” as best film and Boyle won best director -- positive auguries for its shot at a best picture Oscar.

An epic search

To cast the central character Nullah, Luhrmann had casting directors literally scour the continent; he explained that there is no child casting agency that represents Aboriginal children in Australia. The director traveled to some 30 impoverished Aboriginal enclaves to audition children. And after deciding upon Brandon Walters, Luhrmann went on an 11-day hunting expedition with the boy’s father to persuade Walters’ family that his intentions were honorable.

In dealing with novice actors, though, filmmakers are bound to bump up against a certain lack of polish. Like when the person you want to hire has no clue about who you are. Discovered at a local swimming pool in far-flung northwestern Australia, Walters was oblivious about his director and had costar Nicole Kidman’s stock-in-trade all wrong.

Asked if he knew who Luhrmann was before filming, Walters said: “Not really. My family told me he did ‘Moulin Rouge’ and ‘Strictly Ballroom.’ Nicole, I thought she was a famous pop singer or something.”

Luhrmann laughed at the memory. “At first, he was quite shy. Nicole really helped with the directing of him.”

But in the writer-director’s view, that guileless quality made Walters perfect for the role. “He seems majestic and he is,” Luhrmann said. “This casting had nothing to do with what stardom is made of. It’s really nonacting. Brandon, he’s just real. I was very lucky.”

Staff writer Geoff Boucher contributed additional reporting to this story.

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chris.lee@latimes.com