Inside the Search for Australia’s Next Star
Casting Director Thea McLeod on Finding Talent, Backing Actors and the Future of Casting
A single casting brief lands in Thea McLeod’s inbox.
Female. Around 20. Strong dramatic instincts.
Within hours, more than 700 submissions arrive from agents across Australia.
Somewhere among those hundreds of self-tapes could be the country’s next breakout star. Finding her is McLeod’s job.
For more than three decades, the casting director has quietly shaped Australian film and television. Through McLeod Casting, she has assembled the casts of productions including Neighbours, Better Man, Lie With Me, Heat, Riptide, Schapelle, City Homicide and Underbelly Files, helping launch the careers of countless performers before audiences knew their names.
Now, as President of the Casting Guild of Australia, McLeod is championing the profession itself—arguing that casting isn’t simply about filling roles, but discovering artists, building ensembles and, increasingly, navigating an industry transformed by technology.
“We actually want all the actors to do a brilliant job because then we’re doing our job really well,” McLeod tells The Hollywood Reporter Australia. “People sometimes think casting directors are sitting there judging them, but we’re genuinely on their side. We want them to relax, trust themselves and give us the best performance they possibly can, because that’s how we find the people who are going to make a project great.”
Ironically, McLeod never intended to become a casting director.
She began as an actor, producing independent theatre while still a teenager before moving to London, where she spent more than a decade performing while working in production and commercials. A temporary job assisting an established casting director gradually became something far more significant.
“I completely fell into casting,” she says. “I was an out-of-work actor trying to pay the bills, but I had an incredible mentor and learned everything on the job. Looking back now, all those experiences—acting, producing, understanding what performers go through—they’ve become the foundation of how I approach casting today.”
Returning to Australia after starting a family, she quickly established herself in television before embarking on what would become a 15-year association with Neighbours.
For McLeod, the long-running soap wasn’t simply one of Australia’s most successful television series—it was an acting academy disguised as popular entertainment.
“We were shooting five, sometimes six episodes a week. Actors had to learn incredibly quickly, work with different directors every week and constantly adapt. But it was also incredibly supportive. There were drama coaches, voice coaches and experienced crew everywhere. It really was one of the greatest training grounds this country has ever had, not just for actors but for writers, directors, designers and every department on a production.”
The show’s cancellation in 2025, she believes, left a significant gap in Australia’s screen ecosystem.
“It wasn’t just about losing a television show. We lost a place where people could learn their craft every single day.”
Today, however, the casting process itself has changed dramatically.
The rise of self-taped auditions means McLeod now reviews performances from every corner of the country—and increasingly, for international productions.
Rather than seeing fewer actors, she’s seeing more than ever.
“I might put out a brief for one role and receive 700 submissions almost immediately,” she says. “People imagine that’s overwhelming, but it’s actually exciting because you never know where the next great actor is coming from. It could be someone represented by a brand-new agent in regional Australia. It could be somebody you’ve never seen before. That’s the magic of casting.”
That excitement is something many performers underestimate.
McLeod dismisses the notion that casting directors only watch the opening moments of an audition before making a decision.
Instead, she describes the process as assembling a giant creative puzzle.
“You absolutely have instinct. Sometimes a person walks onto the screen and you immediately think, ‘That’s the character.’ But you’re also thinking about the entire production. You’re asking yourself how they’ll work with the other actors, how they’ll fit into the family, who they’ll play opposite. You’re constantly building a complete world, not just choosing one performance.”
Perhaps the greatest misconception, she says, is that casting directors are looking for perfection. They’re not.
“It’s not supposed to be a polished performance. We’re looking for possibility. Actors sometimes put enormous pressure on themselves trying to make a self-tape perfect, but that’s not what we’re after. We can see the potential. We can see what someone might become in the role. Sometimes all we need is that glimpse.”
That philosophy has informed McLeod’s work beyond individual productions.
Since helping establish the Casting Guild of Australia in 2013, she has worked to give casting directors a collective voice while advocating for better industry recognition, stronger professional standards and greater inclusion across Australian productions.
Today, the Guild’s work spans everything from diversity initiatives and mental health support to the industry’s response to artificial intelligence—an area McLeod describes as one of its most pressing priorities.
“It’s evolving so quickly that we have to understand it from every perspective,” she says. “It’s about protecting casting directors, performers and agents, while also understanding where the technology can help and where it creates risks. That’s why those international conversations with other guilds have become so important.”
The Guild has also established its Rising Stars initiative, designed to identify promising young Australian actors before the rest of the world discovers them. It seems a fitting extension of McLeod’s career. After all, long before audiences recognise tomorrow’s stars, she’s already watched their audition.
And sometimes, she says, the moment arrives without warning.
“You’ll be watching tape after tape and then suddenly someone appears and the character just jumps off the screen. It’s one of those moments where you go, ‘Oh my God, that’s it.’ Those are the moments you never get tired of. That’s why I still love casting after all these years.”
Paris Raine & THR Australia