Chances are that if you have watched any Australian drama featuring First Nations actors, it was cast by Austinmer resident Anousha Zarkesh. Think of award-winning series like Total Control and Mystery Road: Anousha. Or films like The New Boy and High Ground: Anousha again.
Over her many years as a casting director for film and television, Anousha has become known as the pioneer of diversity casting, discovering new talent everywhere from Arab communities to Aboriginal men and women from remote outback town camps.
Children who have never performed for a camera before are her speciality.
It’s work that requires a unique combination of skills: “You need to love actors and acting, be a good observer of human behaviour, have strong facilitating and communication skills and be a part-time amateur psych,” she says.
It’s not a desk job. Every production takes Anousha on the road, which is how she likes it. “For Warwick Thornton’s The New Boy I visited three schools a day between Adelaide and Alice. The car is my office.”
She treats every casting as an adventure, venturing out into deserts and isolated communities with relish. If it means camping, that’s fine. Using a helicopter because roads are closed? She’s up for it. Crocodiles? Just a work hazard. She never travels empty-handed. Having first gained permission from traditional owners, she arrives with basics, including fresh food and water, for places where these are in short supply. The welcome is not always warm: “It can feel edgy, but I have never felt unsafe.”
Maybe her mixed heritage gives her an edge: her mother Carol owns Austinmer’s much-loved Mala Beads and her father was an Iranian political dissident. Anousha’s temperament is fiery, but she also knows how to wait, for hours if necessary, sitting under a tree, or yarning with a mob in the middle of nowhere, to earn the trust of amateurs and coax them into auditioning for her camera.
Where once she used to watch for stand-out kids outside school playgrounds, now she is invited in to talk at assemblies about opportunities and careers on screen, having essentially created a professional path that did not exist.
“In some communities where language may be an issue, I have a book that shows the story we are trying to tell. Often I’m demonstrating what I need, like spear throwing, and everyone is shrieking with laughter.”
She stays in touch with many of the performers she discovers, finding them agents, giving informal advice. It’s 24/7 work, and has at times overwhelmed her life as the mother of two daughters, one of whom is now working alongside her, learning the biz, casting extras.
Somehow, Anousha managed to fit in two years as vice-president of industry body Screen Illawarra.
Her current production slate averages about 10 shows a year: “But it’s going up all the time. I don’t get the non-diverse gigs, and sometimes I wish I did, but there are no gaps in my schedule and these are the stories I want to tell.”
