Pop Culture Guy Episode 7: Unknown Spotlight—Andrea Romano

One of my early videos for my Pop Culture Guy series, this one is about Andrea Romano. She is a well-known voice acting casting director who helped cast some of the most well-known voices in both 1990s and modern animation. The writing below is taken from a project I had to do wherein I had to research the career of any casting director.

In filmmaking, every single job done is as important as the next one in order for the film to be completed. One particular job that is one of the most important is the responsibilities of the casting directors. They’re the ones who are in charge of finding the right actor for a certain part that would be right to fill.

One of the most famous casting directors who work in Los Angeles is Andrea Romano. Romano grew up in Long Island, New York with an Italian family and graduated from the State University of New York at Fredonia in 1977. She auditioned for various plays on Broadway that she then played in at night while keeping a steady job during the day. Moving to San Diego two years later, Romano had a hard time finding theatre work and instead found herself in a temporary position at a talent agency then finding work in other agencies before working with Hanna-Barbera in 1984 as a voice-over director and casting director, and this led to her working on animated shows and films like The Smurfs, Pound Puppies, and Jetsons: The Movie. When the company died down in the late ‘80s, Romano chose to become a freelance director which led to her work with Warner Bros. and the start of her fame.

Her work with Warner Bros. led to her working on many of its animated shows such as Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, and several direct-to-video animated films like Wakko’s Wish and many of the Land Before Time films. However, her fame came with her work on the DC Animated Universe once Batman: The Animated Series began production and she helped cast Kevin Conroy as Batman and the rest of the voice cast who were considered the best for the parts. Since then she has done work on Ben 10, SpongeBob SquarePants, and teamed up with DCAU founder Bruce Timm on many of his projects such as Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League, and many of his animated films. Even today, she still works in casting the right people for such shows as Beware the Batman and The Legend of Korra.

Today, Romano is considered one of the most loved and successful casting directors of all time having won numerous awards for her work. She casts people not based on star power but on how well the actor’s voice works well for the character and dislikes replacing them. Whenever casting for a role she picks from a selection of dozens if not hundreds of actors. Casting actors with a right role, such as Mark Hamill as The Joker, Tim Daly as Superman, and Michael Rosenbaum as The Flash, is what makes her the best at what she does. Actors she has cast like Wil Wheaton have thanked her for helping boost their careers.