Casting The Blind Side

26 March 2010

The Blind Side

Casting on the The Blind Side began with Sandra Bullock, who Kosove says was "the first and only choice for the role of Leigh Anne Tuohy."

Bullock read the screenplay and recalls, "It was a beautifully written script. It had all the right beats in all the right places. And I was amazed how John gave every one of the characters such a nice arc each character has a distinct journey."

Nevertheless, it took some convincing on the part of Hancock to get the actress to accept the role of the headstrong wife and mother, who, with a simple act of kindness, brings Michael Oher in out of the cold, literally and figuratively.

Hancock remembers, "Sandy liked the script but was having trouble figuring out how to portray Leigh Anne. We would meet and she would ask all kinds of questions, but I wasn’t able to come up with the answers she was looking for."

"That was my biggest reservation," Bullock affirms. "John would try to explain her to me, but he’d always fall short. I kept feeling something is missing."

Hancock continues, "I think Sandy was understandably frustrated with my inability to describe the character, but that’s because Leigh Anne is indescribable. It’s one of the wonderful things about her.

"Finally I said, ‘Sandy, you just have to meet her.’ So we went down to Memphis and I introduced her to Leigh Anne. It turned into a full day spent with Leigh Anne and everything that involves: craziness and mayhem and fun and laughter and getting a lot of stuff done in very short order.

"At the end of the day, Sandy turned to me and said, ‘Okay I get it.’ She had experienced firsthand the tornado that is ‘Tuohy time,’ and we were off and running."

"Once I saw the whole package, I realized why John couldn’t explain her," the actress states. "How can you explain that kind of energy? By the end of one day with Leigh Anne, I was exhausted.

"She manages to do what she wants to do in the manner she wants to do it. She doesn’t care what it takes; she just gets it done her way. All I can say is, if there were more Leigh Anne Tuohys, the world would be a better-run, more harmonious and more productive place as long as it was by her rules," she laughs.

"It was terrifying to think of playing her, but it was a challenge I couldn’t say no to. She’s such an amazing person."

Playing Leigh Anne went beyond imparting her singular spirit. Bullock also needed to change her familiar brunette hair to match her character’s blonde locks, and she worked with dialect coach Francie Brown to master Leigh Anne’s accent, as well as the cadence and inflections in her voice.

In order for Brown to be an effective coach, she needed to hear from the source. Leigh Anne Tuohy reveals, "She hounded me. She called me and said, ‘Say Leigh Anne 30 times. Say Sean.’ There were words she’d want me to go over and over, and I’m thinking, ‘Didn’t you get it the first dozen times?’ She was very persistent, but she did a good job," she smiles.

Bullock, who is also from the South, notes, "Many people think a Southern accent is a Southern accent, but there are many different ones. But it wasn’t just Leigh Anne’s accent. My dialect coach explained it was also the intent behind her words.

"Once we figured out the intent on top of the dialect, it helped so much. I wasn’t trying to copy her exactly because then it becomes a caricature, but there is a way she goes about life that you need to pick up on or you’re going to be left behind. So we wanted to capture as much of the essence of Leigh Anne as we could."

The strength of Leigh Anne Tuohy’s personality made casting the role of her husband, Sean Tuohy, in Hancock’s words 'difficult.' The director goes on to explain, "When you’re around the Tuohy family, you get the sense that she’s the engine, but he is the glue that holds it all together.

"Sean is completely self-assured and comfortable in his own skin. He has that Southern ex-athlete attitude; there’s a swagger there."

"We needed an actor who would have a real screen presence opposite the whirlwind that is Leigh Anne," Johnson confirms. "We had to have an actor who would make Sean feel just as important as she without having as much screen time."

Hancock says they found everything they were looking for in actor and country music superstar Tim McGraw. "When Tim McGraw’s name came up, I thought he would be a great choice. I had admired his work in movies and he had all the qualities we were looking for. It felt like a natural fit and he turned out to be fantastic. I loved working with him."

In fact, McGraw fit the role even more naturally than the filmmakers initially thought. Both McGraw and the real Sean Tuohy had grown up in Louisiana, and, like Sean, the actor had also excelled in sports throughout his life.

McGraw attests, "I was always an athlete; I can’t remember ever not playing sports. I thought that’s what I was going to do with my life until I got to college and bought a guitar. And the rest," he grins, "is history."

The actor adds that the similarities between him and Sean Tuohy were only part of the reasons he was drawn to the role. "Sean is an all-around good guy, and the inspirational story of what he and his family did for this kid, the time, the effort and the love he put out, is pretty incredible.

"Also, a positive movie about sports is something I really enjoy seeing because sports, if played the right way and coached the right way, can really teach you a lot about yourself and about life in general."

McGraw’s words are borne out in the story of the film’s central character. Finding the right actor to play the role of Michael Oher posed the filmmakers’ biggest casting challenge by far. He had to be the right age and have Michael’s preternatural size, but he also had to convey an innate reserve.

Hancock comments, "The process of casting Michael Oher was long and exhausting; it was a needle in a haystack situation.

"We carried out a nationwide search, going to a lot of different cities and hiring local casting directors to find actors with the qualifications we needed, both physically and spiritually, for lack of a better word. We were looking for a very specific combination. In short, we needed a gentle giant."

They discovered the perfect combination of size and personality in an aspiring actor named Quinton Aaron, who was living in New York when he was called in to audition for The Blind Side. Two weeks later, he was being flown to Los Angeles to meet with Hancock and the producers.

"We looked at a lot of actors who didn’t quite fit the bill," Hancock recalls. "When I saw Quinton’s tape, there was something about him that was missing in the other ones. Then when he came in the door, my first instinct was to hug him, and it was that quality that first struck me.

"He also has a face that draws you in; when he’s quiet and looks at you with those doe eyes, there’s a story there that you want to know. I just had a gut feeling he was our guy that we were about to change his life in a spectacular way."

Learning he had won the lead role of Michael Oher "was better than any dream," says Aaron, who adds that he felt a strong connection to his onscreen alter ego. "When I read the story, I saw that we had a lot in common.

"Neither of us knew our fathers growing up. I was the biggest kid in my school; he was the biggest kid in his school. I kept to myself a lot and was more of a quiet, shy kid, and that’s pretty much what he was like. I also played some football at one point, but I wasn’t good at it."

Hancock remarks, "I knew Quinton had played a little high school football, but the concern was that he had to look like he could really handle himself on a football field.

"We got him involved with trainers, who set him up with a regimen of diet and workouts. He lost a lot of weight, but, more importantly, he started looking like an athlete."

Aaron, who lost more than 100 pounds in preparation for the role, relates, "I was determined to do anything and everything required, because if you love what you’re doing, you are going to give one hundred and ten percent.

"Before the movie started I went through seven weeks of intense training, with two-a-day practices every day and we continued training through filming. I started calling John Lee Hancock ‘Coach Lee’ because he was always encouraging me and making me feel good about everything I was doing.

"He’s a great guy and I felt so honored to be working with him and Sandra and Tim, who were also such an inspiration to me. It was so much fun; I loved every minute of it."

Aaron shared the experience of working on his first major feature with his two younger castmates: Lily Collins, who played the Tuohy’s teenage daughter, Collins; and Jae Head, who played their 10-year-old son, Sean Junior, called S.J., who was the first to befriend Michael at school.

"We were all learning together and sharing new experiences, which made it really fun," says Lily Collins. "From the very beginning, we were like real siblings. Quinton took me under his wing and called himself my bodyguard; he was a big, gentle teddy bear, which is apparently the same relationship Collins had with Michael.

"And Jae! The moment we met, we started going back and forth and nagging each other like only a little brother and big sister can do."

Jae Head says that his character is more than a friend and a brother to Michael. "S.J. is also his coach, which felt really cool. He is very loyal to his big brother and is going to do whatever he can to help him.

"He helps coach him on how to play football, and I think S.J. has a lot of responsibility for Michael becoming a starting left tackle in college. I really do," he smiles.

Off the football field, the person most responsible for Michael getting into college was his tutor, Miss Sue, who became an extended member of the Tuohy family. Miss Sue is played by Academy Award® winner Kathy Bates, who, coincidentally, is from the same part of Memphis, Tennessee as her character.

That fact especially pleased the real Miss Sue, who says, "I thought she was the perfect person to play me; it was a true honor."

Bates offers, "Miss Sue and I didn’t meet but had a long talk on the telephone. It turns out she and I grew up very close to one another. It was a great help to listen to her voice and her stories about Michael.

"I was not familiar with Michael’s whole story, but after reading the script, I was very moved by it and by the fact that it was true and still in motion. I believe audiences will love this story. It’s current, it’s true, and it shows the power of the golden rule in action."

For the filmmakers, one of the real treats in casting The Blind Side was inviting the real SEC college coaches who had courted Michael Oher to appear as themselves. Turning the tables on the coaches, executive producer Molly Smith was responsible for recruiting them to play for The Blind Side team.

"Growing up in the South, I grew up around SEC football and I’m a big football fan, so it was great fun to be able to call these guys and ask them to play themselves in the movie. The biggest selling point for them, of course, was getting to meet Sandra Bullock.

"The hardest thing was working out the logistics of getting them all here on certain days, which was quite a feat because they were all a little busy with their day jobs," she jokes. "But they were excited to come down, and they all had a great time."

The coaches appearing in the film are: Nick Saban, formerly of LSU and now at Alabama; Tommy Tuberville, formerly of Auburn; Houston Nutt, formerly of Arkansas and now at Ole Miss; Phil Fulmer, formerly of Tennessee; Ed Orgeron, formerly of Ole Miss and now an assistant head coach at Tennessee; and the legendary Lou Holtz, formerly of South Carolina.

"It was one of the best days of my career," Hancock declares. "I’m a huge college football fan so getting to meet those coaches and work with them was incredible."