- Kelly Lynch, Drugstore Cowboy, 1988. Lynch remembers (as well she might). “The script that I read, the movie we made, and the movie I saw were all the same thing. And that rarely happens.” She found the scenario about the early ’70s drugs scene in her agent’s office. “What a cool title! OK, I’ve got to do this.” The agent said: “Yeah, but they’re looking at Patti Smith and Bob Dylan. Do you feel like you’re like Patti Smith?” And Kell y said: “I feel like I could be. I mean, I can be something different than I am.” AuteurGus Van Sant recognised this in her tests, particularly “where Dianne comes back and Bob is kind of cleaned up, with that long walk down the hallway, that whole bit where you realize that she’s really in love with him, but she’s an addict. For me, that scene is who that character is. And that’s what got me the part. I think I was the first person that Gus met, so when he got up and said, ‘OK, I want you,’ the room of producers and people were, like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa… Gus, look, we’ve got a bunch of people we’re meeting, and, Kelly, you were great, but this is just the very, very beginning of the casting process.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, OK.’ Then, he walked over to me and said, ‘OK, so what are you doing in September? You keep it open.’ I said, ‘Uh, yeah, I will.’ Then, he pulled me out in the hallway and said outright, ‘I want you.’ And he took a picture of me in the T-shirt I was wearing, just a Polaroid and not a real flattering picture, but the kind that looks into your soul, almost. And that was the only time that’s ever happened, where the director just made this decision. And he was effectively an amateur at the time. He had done a 20-minute short before Drugstore Cowboy.” [Quotes via IMDb; no other source credited].
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 1