BAFTA Masterclass - Casting Director Des Hamilton

Finding the right actor for a role is critical in helping the director realise his or her vision. As Des Hamilton, one of the best discoverers of acting talent, puts it: "A film can look beautiful, it can sound great but if you're watching two planks of wood bang their heads together it's going to be crap".

As a measure of his regard with serious British and European filmmakers, Glaswegian Hamilton has worked with some of our great directors: Lynne Ramsay, Gaspar Noe, Shane Meadows, Lars Von Trier, Lone Scherfig, Andrea Arnold, Nicolas Winding Refn. He's got a strong reputation for helping find inexperienced actors (or non-actors) with the charisma and talent to pull off a lead role: Thomas Turgoose in This is England, Ashley Walters in Bullet Boy and Samuel Bottomley in Tyrannosaur.

Hamilton's other credits include: Melancholia, Four Lions, Antichrist, Wuthering Heights, Enter the Void, to name a few. Here he'll talk about how he works with the director to understand their needs and then stakes out to unearth the right talent, often taking great risks to find the actor how brings truth and authenticity to the film.