Jeremy Gordon Launches New Casting Company

On a fateful day in 2002, actor Jeremy Gordon was in the right place at the right time.

It began with two low-budget horror films, “Petrified” and “Decadent Evil.” Mr. Gordon’s best friend, line producer Joe Dain, handed him the scripts.

“You have some acting experience. We need a casting director. Give this a shot,” he had said, Mr. Gordon recalled during a telephone interview from his Los Angeles home base last week.

Disenchanted by the Hollywood scene, the Southampton native eagerly jumped at the opportunity, and accidently stumbled upon a new career path.

“After I did these films, I realized I was good at this,” Mr. Gordon said after wrapping a casting call for a Coinstar commercial. “I realized this was why I studied acting.”

Since 2004, he’s worked as either a casting associate or casting director on 45 projects—including the blockbuster feature films “We Bought a Zoo” starring Matt Damon and “Knight and Day” starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, as well as indie projects “Spork” and “Snuff.”

This past fall, Mr. Gordon launched Gordon-Lipari Casting with his partner, Beth Lipari, after they worked together at Beach/Katzman Casting on films such as “We’re the Millers” and “The Wolverine.”

So far, the company has handled five projects, including the Coinstar commercial, Mr. Gordon reported. During the first six-hour casting call of a two-day process for that commercial, the director saw about 150 actors, he said.

“I bring in a lot of actors. Always,” he said. “I’d rather bring in a lot more than needed to cover my ass and make sure I’m getting the right people in and have plenty of choices. I can’t even begin to tell you how many actors I’ve seen. I see a lot of actors.”

Within the first couple lines of an audition, Mr. Gordon said he knows whether the actor fits the role. Though he’s been proven wrong only a handful of occasions, his gut is usually right, he said.

“In all honesty, a lot of it has to do with what they look like,” he said. “Some actors can be really talented, but if they don’t look right for the role—if they’re too anything—it won’t work. Part of it is, of course, the talent. You have to be a talented actor, you have to be able to handle the drama of the scene, but part of it is just the feel. I’ve seen tons of actors who look great, tons of actors who are very talented, but it just wasn’t right. You know that feeling when you know someone’s going to be a friend of yours or not? It’s that. You just trust that.”

If anyone is an authoritative source on actors, it’s Mr. Gordon, having spent most of his 40 years around them. The acting bug bit in eighth grade when his mother and stepfather, Susan and Bob Van Olst, moved from Brooklyn to Southampton, he said. The young boy acted in every school play he could.

“As a freshman, he got into the Drama Club and played one of the little kids in ‘Sound of Music,’” Mr. Van Olst wrote in an email on Monday. “And he totally fell in love with it. [He] Came home from the first show and wrote in his diary that he found his passion. He had been recording theme songs from his favorite TV shows since he was 8, so no surprise.”

Graduation in 1990 from Southampton High School led him upstate to Syracuse University, where his acting professors urged him to move to California. His face belonged on television and film, they said, not the stage.

“So I went out to LA and decided, ‘Nope, I don’t want to do this,’” he recalled. “It’s crazy. It’s really, really difficult. You have to really want it. It’s a lot of hustle and bustle and rejection. It wasn’t my thing and I’m not sure I like to be the center of attention. You have to really want that. I like being behind the camera.”

Over the years, Mr. Gordon has had his share of unique experiences in the casting room, he said. The low-budget horror flick “Doll Graveyard”—one of the first films he ever cast—and actress Kristyn Green are at the top of his list.

“In every horror film, you’re going to have a pretty girl with big breasts and blonde hair who is killed off first,” he laughed. “So Kristyn walks in and she’s doing a scene where she’s seducing her boyfriend. She asks if she could use me, if I would sit in a chair in the middle of the room. I didn’t know better, so I said, ‘Yes.’

“So I’m sitting in this chair and it’s one of those office chairs with the wheels, and she’s doing the scene and getting really into it, ends up sitting on my lap and the chair topples backward and we fall on the ground,” he continued. “So she’s literally straddling me on my back and she didn’t stop. She didn’t miss a beat. She didn’t say, ‘I want to start again.’ She totally went with it and used it. It was absolutely hysterical and the director cast her in the role.”

That is the sort of “it” factor Mr. Gordon looks for while casting. Sometimes, he said, he finds it in the most unexpected of places.

“Many years ago, I went to a stand-up comedy club and saw this girl who I think was 8 at the time do this really hysterical act she wrote all about ‘Flavor of Love,’” he said, referencing VH1’s reality dating game show parody starring television personality Flavor Flav. “I was laughing but also thinking, for an 8-year-old, this is a little inappropriate. But she brought the house down.”

Her name was Sydney Park. Mr. Gordon approached the girl and her mother, Kelly, after the performance and swapped phone numbers, determined to cast her in one of his projects someday.

Three years later, that chance came with the film “Spork.” One of the lead characters, Tootsie Roll, was practically written for her, Mr. Gordon said.

“She came in and nailed it,” he said. “She was so perfect. There was no competition for her. She was cast in the film and she was a huge hit. Everybody loved her. Sydney Park. She will be a huge name someday.”

Those are the successes Mr. Gordon lives for, he said. And though the former actor can be found behind the scenes these days, he admits that Hollywood still gets to him.

“You should see my Facebook posts,” he laughed. “Every industry, every job has its pain-in-the-ass moments, but there’s great things about the industry, as well. I’ve made some great friends out here and feel blessed that I’m still working a job I want. Yeah, it’s a crazy industry and it’s a little unforgiving and unfriendly at times, but when you break through—I’ve been doing it for 10 years and I feel like I’m just breaking through and getting better jobs and a little bit of recognition—it feels good. Once you start finding some success, the rest of it doesn’t matter.”