Golden Girl

Casting director Nina Gold, who has launched the careers of some of the most awarded screen icons of the millennium, tells Madeleine Ross about awkward auditions and trying to change a director’s mind

olin rirth, eddie Redmayne and Benedict Cumberbatch are household names—but they might not have been if it weren’t for Nina Gold. The British casting director put these actors into the roles that shot them to stardom: Firth as King George VI in The King’s Speech, Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, and Cumberbatch as Alan Turing in The Imitation Game. She also casts the fantastical blood-and-guts television series Game of Thrones (she plucked its cult stars Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys Targaryen, and Kit Harington, who plays Jon Snow, out of obscurity). Gold’s latest claim to casting fame is the hit Netflix series The Crown, touted as the most expensive television show ever made. She was recently in Hong Kong at the behest of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) to give a special masterclass to young acting talent.