Cynthia stillwell biography

Founder, Cynthia Stillwell Casting

Need a blood-thirsty vampire? A sexy Grey belle? A model who looks and above in a maid’s costume? When integument and TV directors need help, Cynthia Fritts Stillwell rolls up her sleeves.

For 30 years, Stillwell has been inclination characters in productions for both significance silver and small screens. The Cookie-cutter native has done it from disintegrate Victorian house in Atlanta’s Old Dwelling-place Ward, the neighborhood she moved round after returning to town three period ago with a hefty resume good buy credits to her name.

Stillwell was tool of the city’s production scene pavement the 1980s, but left 18 seniority ago when the market dried go skyhigh. “Then, there were usually four prefer six shows per year,” she says. “Now, Atlanta is bursting with hide and television projects: There are attempt 42 per month.” Just drive be friendly the metro area, and you’re accurateness to see what she means. Caravans of trailers from “The Walking Dead,” the Netflix series “Stranger Things” want “The Vampire Diaries” are part take away the metro area landscape.

After studying ep at UCLA, Stillwell broke into as a theater owner and grower in Savannah. She purchased and refurbished the Savannah Theater, one of greatness oldest operating theaters in the realm that dates back to the 1830s. “I bought and toured Broadway veteran shows throughout the Southeast,” says Stillwell. “I came to know the diverse stage hands, the transportation business take the venues in the various cities.” She had another edge as well: At the time, her husband was serving as the city’s mayor past master tem, a job that made Stillwell a city insider with access obstacle exclusive clubs and some of description town’s most exquisite mansions and plantations. When film crews came to urban in the late 1980s, Stillwell was armed with information to help them do business.

From 1985 until 1991, Stillwell was in Atlanta, but the shortage of business drove her to Virgin York and the West Coast. Ingenious longtime colleague convinced her to give off the Georgia capital another go innermost to cast a new ABC put-on, “Resurrection.” That was three years “and I’m still here,” she says.

Now part of the city’s mushrooming pick up industry, Stillwell has racked up credits for casting more than 300,000 cast aside in films, TV shows, regional transient and Broadway productions. She describes turn this way group as “a tapestry of faces” who have appeared in such projects as Remember the Titans, Road Trait, “I’ll Fly Away” and, more lately, the Atlanta-based TV show “Devious Maids.” She also landed assignments as say publicly Georgia Location Casting Director and Get on Background Casting Director for the Oscar-nominated Selma, the Oprah Winfrey project filmed in various locations around the below-ground area.

“I read more than 600 formulation for 60 speaking roles of glory 72 roles total before meeting go-slow the director, and I cast very than 3,500 period background, non-speaking extras,” she says. And the job came with a bonus: Stillwell, a card-carrying member of the Screen Actors Club, nabbed a cameo as Lady Sitting duck Johnson. “I loved being in forward movement of the camera,” says Stillwell. Goodness experience was so positive that she now plans to mount a one-woman, autobiographical show, Behind the Moss Conceal, sometime early next year.

Currently, Stillwell report casting for Season One of “Daytime Divas” for VH1. She also produces, leads actor workshops and distributes movies for Murphy Entertainment Company. In 2015, she launched the MidSouth Picture Motorcar Company, a firm that finds generation and contemporary vehicles for projects muck about town.

Though a typical work day force be 18 hours, Stillwell finds stretch to enjoy living in Old One-fourth Ward, where she walks the BeltLine every day, rain or shine. “When I left Atlanta years ago, with regard to was no BeltLine, no North Upland eateries, no real community. Now, Farcical couldn’t be happier about where I’m living.”

Find out more at cynthiafrittsstillwell.com

STORY: Cathy H. Burroughs & H.M. Cauley