CBS has just cancelled ‘Stalker’ and ‘The McCarthys’.

CBS has made it official. The two new freshman series, ‘Stalker’ and ‘The McCarthy’s will no longer air on CBS. They join ‘Battle Creek’ on the cancellation list.

‘Stalker’ ratings were mixed. But, ultimately the show’s ratings were not good enough for the CBS network executives to keep it on board. However, according to Deadline, there are rumors suggesting that Warner Bros. is interested in selling the show to other networks.’Stalker’ was a cop drama series about victims of stalking and the detectives of the LAPD’s Threat Assessment Unit who investigate the crimes.

‘The McCarthy’s was expected to get cancelled ever since CBS pulled the comedy from the schedule in early February. The series revolves around the McCarthys, a close-knit working class Boston clan whose sports legacy runs deep in the family. But when outspoken father Arthur, a dedicated basketball coach for the fictional Cardinal Hennigan High School, decides to take his athletically challenged—and openly gay—son Ronny under his wing as his new assistant, the other siblings (who are more sports passionate) start crying foul over their dad’s choice.

Discuss this story with fellow Project Casting fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @projectcasting.

Here are 17 actors and their first on screen appearances in movies and television.

Every actor has to start somewhere. Many A-list actors also had humble beginnings with small roles, one-liners, and even background extra roles. Here are several A-list actors and their first on-screen appearances.

1. Robert Downey Jr.

Robert Downey Jr., 5 y old, making his screen debut in the movie “Pound” released in 1970, written and directed by his father Robert Downey Sr. His only line is: “Have any hair on your balls?”

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA01LXjau9U https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000375

2. Leonardo DiCaprio

Leonardo DiCaprio, age 9, auditioning for “The Outsiders” (1983). Unfortunately, he didn’t get the part. Instead, his career began with his appearance in several commercials, educational films and as a supporting cast member of the sitcom “Growing Pains” (1985). It wasn’t until 1989 that DiCaprio landed his first credited role: two episodes of “The New Lassie”.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDI60iPDZo0 https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000138

3. Anthony Hopkins

Anthony Hopkins made his first professional stage appearance in the Palace Theatre, Swansea, in 1960 with Swansea Little Theatre’s production of “Have a Cigarette”. In 1965 (age 28) he made his screen debut as Dr. Harding on the TV series “The Man in Room 17”.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug7bKzzlWRU https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000164

4. Angelina Jolie

As the daughter of actor Jon Voight, Angelina Jolie appeared in the media from an early age. Her she is, 7 years of age, in her first feature film “Lookin’ To Get Out” (1982) as Tosh… Also starring her father.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLpoMELXFco https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001401

5. Reese Witherspoon

In 1991, Reese Witherspoon (age 15) attended an open casting call for “The Man in the Moon”, intending to audition as a bit player, she was instead cast for the lead role of Dani Trant, a 14-year-old country girl who falls in love for the first time with her 17-year-old neighbor. Her performance was regarded as “memorably touching” by Variety magazine, and critic Roger Ebert commented, “Her first kiss is one of the most perfect little scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAt0g38ATic

6. Jake Gyllenhaal

As a child, Jake Gyllenhaal was regularly exposed to filmmaking due to his family’s deep ties to the industry. He would audition for the film “The Mighty Ducks” but his parents did not allow him to appear in it because it would have required leaving home for two months. Instead, Gyllenhaal (age 11) made his acting debut as Billy Crystal’s son in the 1991 comedy film “City Slickers”.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVo9Jiuiqxw

7. Scarlett Johansson

Scarlett Johansson began acting during childhood, after her mother started taking her to auditions. She would audition for commercials but took rejection so hard her mother began limiting her to film tryouts. She made her film debut at the age of 9, in the 1994 fantasy comedy, “North”. Here she is, 9 y old, during a casting audition.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C51jBXO3xf4

8. Joseph Gordon Levitt

“Stranger on My Land” (1988) was a television western film, premiered on American Broadcasting Company. It was Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s, aged 6, first appearance on TV. (Yes! It really is Joseph Gordon-Levitt) Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYhpqE0lJMs

9. Al Pacino

Before Al Pacino gained his celebrity status he acted in basement plays in New York’s theatrical underground. He made his screen debut (28 y old), as a cast in “Deadly Circle of Violence”, an episode of the ABC television series N.Y.P.D., premiering November 12, 1968. Al Pacino asked the producers if his girlfriend IRL (Jill Clayburgh) could play as his girlfriend in the episode. His request was approved!

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxxky2Jtbao

10. Joaquin Phoenix

Joaquin Phoenix’s first acting job was a guest appearance on the television show “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” also starring his brother, River Phoenix. The series told the adventures of a parentless family of rowdy brothers trying to run the family ranch in northern California. Here he is (8 y) on an episode called “Christmas Song” from 1982.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClhShNlcbuE https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001618

11. Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood’s acting debut was an uncredited bit part as a laboratory assistant in the 1955 film “Revenge of the Creature”. Over the next three years, he had uncredited bit parts in several other films. He was criticized for his stiff manner, his squint, and for hissing his lines through his teeth… a feature that would become a lifelong trademark.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahvUApvswNw https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000142

12. James Franco

After dropping out of UCLA, James Franco decided to pursue his dreams as an actor, combining acting classes with a late-night job at McDonald’s to support himself. He began auditioning in Los Angeles and his first paid role was a television commercial for Pizza Hut, followed by a few guest roles on different television shows.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIryAZFVKtw https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0290556

13. Nicholas Cage

Nicolas Cage (nephew of Francis Ford Coppola) made his first screen appearance, age 17, on ABC’s comedy film “Best of times” (1981). You can see him working out, dancing on a supermarket and giving an inspirational speech. It is also the film debut of Crispin Glover.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsOFY4kPkmk

14. Michelle Pfieffer

Prior to her career as an actor, Michelle Pfieffer worked as a check-out girl at Vons supermarket. In 1978 (19 y old) she participated and won the Miss Orange County beauty pageant. Following her participation she acquired an acting agent and began to audition for television and films.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OxYK7OYqOw

15. Morgan Freeman

Morgan Freeman first became known to the American public through the PBS kids show “The Electric Company” (1971-1977). Notably as “Easy Reader”, “Mel Mounds the DJ”, and “Vincent the Vegetable Vampire”.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u8MY7PjSXU https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000151

16. Tom Hanks

In 1979 Tom Hanks (aged 23) moved to New York City where he made his film debut with a bit-role in the low-budget slasher film “He Knows You’re Alone” (1980).

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0Nbt19ukdg https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000158

17. Ben Affleck

Affleck first appeared, age 7, in a local independent film called “Dark Side of the Street” (1981). However, his biggest success as a child actor was as the star of the PBS children’s series “The Voyage of the Mimi” (1984).

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDDcpt6dGco https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000255

Discuss this story with fellow Project Casting fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @projectcasting.

If Owen Wilson ever taught an acting class, his first lesson would be to teach actors how to say “wow”.

YouTube user Owenergy Studios noticed Wilson’s tendency to use the word and made a video of all the times the actor has said “wow” in a movie. Ultimately, the video points out that the word can be used in a million ways to express different emotions.

“Wow, Buckingham Palace!” “What is it about the produce section? Wow.” “Wow, you’re so dominant.” “Wow, and how’d that affect you with guys?” Watch below to see all of the iterations.

Discuss this story with fellow Project Casting fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @projectcasting.

A new report suggests that the ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ account of Osama bin Laden’s death was basically a lie.

The 2012 action-thriller, ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ was supposed to be based on a true story. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal, ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ was called “the story of history’s greatest manhunt for the world’s most dangerous man”. The movie dramatizes the 10 year manhunt for Osama bin Laden after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. The search eventually leads to the discovery of bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, and the military raid on it that resulted in his death on May 2, 2011.

However, a new report suggests that ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ was based on a lie and essentially Hollywood propaganda to sell to the masses.

Osama bin Laden Investigative Report

According to a 10,000 word investigative report by Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, the entire Bin Laden death story is all a lie.

This weekend Hersh published a new investigative report on the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the gist of which is that Bin Laden wasn’t so much in hiding, as previously reported, but being held on house arrest by Pakistani security services when he was killed.

Hersh argues that the US discovered him not through years of intelligence work, but through a tip from an ISI-connected Pakistani looking to collect the $25 million reward. In addition, from the start, the raid was a kill mission and carried out with the full cooperation of the ISI.

Here are a couple of key points. First, Hersh describes the mission as a joint operation between the ISI and America:

This spring I contacted Durrani [head of the ISI in the 90s] and told him in detail what I had learned about the bin Laden assault from American sources: that bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006; that Kayani and Pasha[Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI] knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms; that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US, and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false.

It was a kill mission from the start:

A former Seal commander, who has led and participated in dozens of similar missions over the past decade, assured me that ‘we were not going to keep bin Laden alive – to allow the terrorist to live. By law, we know what we’re doing inside Pakistan is a homicide. We’ve come to grips with that. Each one of us, when we do these missions, say to ourselves, “Let’s face it. We’re going to commit a murder.”’ The White House’s initial account claimed that bin Laden had been brandishing a weapon; the story was aimed at deflecting those who questioned the legality of the US administration’s targeted assassination programme. The US has consistently maintained, despite widely reported remarks by people involved with the mission, that bin Laden would have been taken alive if he had immediately surrendered.

There was no resistance at the compound (according to Hersh, the ISI guards protecting the compound simply left as soon as they heard a helicopter coming).

There was no firefight as they moved into the compound; the ISI guards had gone. ‘Everyone in Pakistan has a gun and high-profile, wealthy folks like those who live in Abbottabad have armed bodyguards, and yet there were no weapons in the compound,’ the retired official pointed out. Had there been any opposition, the team would have been highly vulnerable. Instead, the retired official said, an ISI liaison officer flying with the Seals guided them into the darkened house and up a staircase to bin Laden’s quarters. The Seals had been warned by the Pakistanis that heavy steel doors blocked the stairwell on the first and second-floor landings; bin Laden’s rooms were on the third floor. The Seal squad used explosives to blow the doors open, without injuring anyone. One of bin Laden’s wives was screaming hysterically and a bullet – perhaps a stray round – struck her knee. Aside from those that hit bin Laden, no other shots were fired. (The Obama administration’s account would hold otherwise.)

‘They knew where the target was – third floor, second door on the right,’ the retired official said. ‘Go straight there. Osama was cowering and retreated into the bedroom. Two shooters followed him and opened up. Very simple, very straightforward, very professional hit.’

Hersh describes Bin Laden as being more or less a sad, sick man, rather than a valuable target that could help share details into Al Qaeda’s terrorist network:

‘Despite all the talk,’ the retired official continued, there were ‘no garbage bags full of computers and storage devices. The guys just stuffed some books and papers they found in his room in their backpacks. The Seals weren’t there because they thought bin Laden was running a command centre for al-Qaida operations, as the White House would later tell the media. And they were not intelligence experts gathering information inside that house.’

Hersh continues to point out that the plan was for the Obama administration to claim Bin Laden had been killed in a drone attack in the Hindu Kush mountains. But because they had crashed a helicopter during a raid, they assummed word would eventually leak, and so the White House and the CIA “couldn’t wait to brag and to claim credit,” according to Robert Gates.

In addition, according to Hersh, the Seals actually killed only Bin Laden, instead of the five people reported, and that the information leading to the raid was obtained through the ISI and by waterboarding suspected terrorists.

Obama, said [John Brennan, then Obama’s senior adviser for counterterrorism] ‘made what I believe was one of the gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory’. Brennan increased the number killed by the Seals inside the compound to five: bin Laden, a courier, his brother, a bin Laden son, and one of the women said to be shielding bin Laden.

Gates also objected to the idea, pushed by Brennan and Leon Panetta, that US intelligence had learned of bin Laden’s whereabouts from information acquired by waterboarding and other forms of torture. ‘All of this is going on as the Seals are flying home from their mission. The agency guys know the whole story,’ the retired official said. ‘It was a group of annuitants who did it.’ (Annuitants are retired CIA officers who remain active on contract.) ‘They had been called in by some of the mission planners in the agency to help with the cover story. So the old-timers come in and say why not admit that we got some of the information about bin Laden from enhanced interrogation?’ At the time, there was still talk in Washington about the possible prosecution of CIA agents who had conducted torture.

The White House Denies the version of events

The White House disagrees with Hersh’s version of events. From CNN:

“There are too many inaccuracies and baseless assertions in this piece to fact check each one,” White House National Security spokesman Ned Price said in a statement to reporters.

He took aim specifically at journalist Seymour Hersh’s assertion that the administration collaborated with Pakistani officials to kill the al Qaeda leader, saying that “the notion that the operation that killed Usama Bin Ladin was anything but a unilateral U.S. mission is patently false.”

“As we said at the time, knowledge of this operation was confined to a very small circle of senior U.S. officials. The President decided early on not to inform any other government, including the Pakistani Government, which was not notified until after the raid had occurred,” Price said.

Zero Dark Thirty: Propaganda?

Zero Dark Thirty received wide critical acclaim, and appeared on 95 critics’ top ten lists of 2012. It was nominated in five categories at the 85th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Chastain, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film Editing, and won the award for Best Sound Editing. The film also earned Golden Globe Award nominations forBest Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, with Chastain winning the award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama.

It is important to point out that the CIA helped write the script for Zero Dark Thirty. When the movie was in pre-production, the CIA demanded changes to the movie’s script. In a memo obtained by Gawker, ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ had several scenes changed and altered.

The much-discussed opening scene of Zero Dark Thirty features the main character Maya, played by Jessica Chastain, observing a detainee at a CIA black site as he is water-boarded and shoved into a tiny box during an interrogation. It appears that an early version had Maya participating in the torture. But during their conference calls, the CIA told Boal that this was not true to life. The memo reads: “For this scene we emphasized that substantive debriefers [i.e. Maya] did not administer [Enhanced Interrogation Techniques] because in this scene he had a non-interrogator, substantive debriefer assisting in a dosing technique.”

There were several other scenes altered and changed. But, it demonstrates that we will probably never know what really happened and what we do know is probably fan-fiction.

Either way, Zero Dark Thirty was pretty entertaining.

Discuss this story with fellow Project Casting fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @projectcasting.