Orange on a Toothpick

Below, in the rollicking comment free-for-all, Jutra writes:

I am attending my first casting session this week.. What does one look for at these?? Does anybody know what makes a good actor for TV?

That's easy.

A huge head.

I am hardly the first to notice this, but I will for the sake of the argument, defer to the great early Scottish casting genius, Stuart MacKenzie:

"Would ya look at the size of that kid's head! It's the size of a planetoid and it has its own weather system! ... I'm not kidding, that boy's head is like Sputnik; spherical but quite pointy at parts! Aye, now that was offsides, now wasn't it? He'll be crying himself to sleep tonight, on his huge pillow."

South Park doesn't have things far off. Neither do the makers of those bobblehead dolls. In my experience, the most amazing thing about your exemplary TV actors is they seem to be bred for it. Not just to be unnaturally good looking (though the "plain girl" in any TV movie is usually someone most of us would give our eyeteeth to date) but also to be below-average in height, in a proportion that ... and you'll have to give me slack here, I'm doing this from memory ... roughly corresponds to DaVinci's Golden Ratio: Uh...I think it's roughly 20% legs, 10% torso, 50% head.

The eagle eyed among you will notice that that does not add up to 100%.

That's because the rest is hair.

Seriously, TV actors are a huge-headed, expressive bunch. Exaggerated eyes or huge mouths also seem to dominate -- especially in the newscaster division.

Steven Colbert mourned the firing of CNN's Aaron Brown last week because he was the last regular anchor guy with glasses. I also can't help but remark that the man who helped us through 9/11 helped us by stirring example. The terrorists who brought the Towers down could do nothing to dent Aaron Brown's head. Damn you, Anderson Cooper, and your Vanderbilty regular-headedness.

Lest you think I'm being glib, I submit to you a partial list of actors whom I've seen up close, or interviewed in my previous journalist life, who fit the big-head stereotype:

Sarah Polley, Will Ferrell, Nicholas Campbell, Charlton Heston (huge), Kevin Smith, Jill Hennessey, Kevin Sorbo, Patrick Stewart, William Shatner, James Doohan, Jeri Ryan, Penn Jillette, Martin Sheen, Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Jennifer Garner, Kirsten Dunst, Jennifer Tilly, Milla Jovovich, Mike Myers, Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis, Mark McKinney, Dave Foley, John Malkovich, John Cusack, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michael Douglas, Geena Davis, Rachel McAdams

And the list goes on.

Is it that the camera likes the big head'uns? Maybe. Is this changing with the move to 16:9 from 4:3 tv sets? Still too early to tell. I think a bigger change is going to be the shift to HD. A friend of mine is an editor in Toronto, and a couple of years ago he edited a couture special for Fashion Television. I watched it since I was just about the only guy he knew with an HD set. Two things disturbed me. In HD it was really, really easy to tell which of the models were dangerously underweight and sickly, not sexy, looking...and Joan Collins.

Joan Collins in HD almost ended my life. For real. Brr.

So there are other factors, Jutra. Sure, a certain charisma, smarts and flexibility in the audition, the ability to take direction, even a certain ineffable sense that maybe the needy actor in front of you isn't totally crazy and might be a decent person needing a break...all of those intangibles are important.

But if the field's crowded and you're pressed for time and can only consider one factor:

Go with the great big head.