Andrea Eastman, the Hollywood casting director responsible for some of the most iconic casting in movie history, has died at the age of 86. Her family confirmed the news to The Hollywood Reporter, telling the publication she died in her sleep.
Career highlights and major discoveries
As the head of casting at Paramount Pictures, Eastman was responsible for bringing James Caan into The Godfather. She also famously discovered Charlie's Angel star Jaclyn Smith and brought Steven Spielberg and Roy Scheider together for the 1975 blockbuster Jaws.
She managed movie icon Sylvester Stallone in his Rocky heyday and persuaded her friend Rob Reiner to hire her client Billy Crystal for 1989's smash hit romcom When Harry Met Sally.
Representing Hollywood's biggest stars
During her long stint working for ICM in Los Angeles and New York, she represented and managed superstars like Barbra Streisand and Burt Reynolds, comic heavyweights such as Peter Boyle and Chevy Chase, and Happy Days legend Henry Winkler.
She also worked with Jamie Lee Curtis, Christopher Reeve, Katharine Ross, Christopher Plummer, James Brolin, Dustin Hoffman, Dyan Cannon, Gabriel Byrne, Brenda Vaccaro, Richard Gere, Kim Basinger, Kathleen Turner, Stockard Channing, Tony Danza, Wes Craven and Katherine Heigl over the years, to name just a few.
The Godfather casting stories
When it came to Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, Eastman worked with Fred Roos to hire the actors for the eventual Best Picture Oscar winner. Reflecting on it in 2023, she said: "You make endless lists when you are a casting director. When you do a movie, you try to think out of the box. For The Godfather, it was endless casting. We worked seven days a week. I was dreaming of Italians all night every night."
She almost changed the entire look of the film when she nearly cast Italian producer, and Sophia Loren's husband, Carlo Ponti as Vito Corleone before Godfather author Mario Puzo suggested Marlon Brando.
The younger Corleone men also looked rather different initially. James Caan was slated to play Michael Corleone opposite Carmine Caridi as Sonny Corleone. However, when Al Pacino was hired to play Michael, Carmine was ultimately deemed too tall and Caan found himself replacing him as Sonny.
Speaking about it years later, Eastman said Caridi, "was a big guy but not menacing. He was like a big Saint Bernard. Luckily, he'd never formally signed a deal, and Coppola trusted me. He was leaving for Sicily [to scout locations], so he told me, 'Just cast my f*****g movie!'"
