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" To call Bonnie Timmermann a casting director is too simple, reductive, and not entirely true. She&amp;#039;s more a mystic, a diviner\u2014a soothsayer of sorts\u2014who can read fortunes in faces and turn earthly mortals into rising stars. She&amp;#039;s cast Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High; Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid; Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing; Tim Robbins in Bull Durham; Ralph Fiennes in Quiz Show; Russell Crowe in The Insider; and Daniel Day-Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans\u2014though she did offer that role to Alec Baldwin first. &amp;quot;He turned it down to star in The Marrying Man with Kim Basinger,&amp;quot; Timmermann says, sighing. (For all her prescient powers, even she can&amp;#039;t fuck with fate.) To grasp the cultural impact of her work, Google the iconic &amp;#039;80s series Miami Vice next to the name Julia Roberts, or Bruce Willis, or Steve Buscemi, or Annette Benning, or Nathan Lane, or Chris Rock, or Helena Bonham Carter, or John Turturro, or Kyra Sedgwick...and watch the clips of those stars being born. &amp;quot;She opened the doors for me in America,&amp;quot; says Irish actor Liam Neeson, a Miami Vice graduate. &amp;quot;I had just played a glorified extra in The Mission, and I was staying with a friend in New York who set me up a meeting with her. I walked all the way from TriBeCa to her Upper East Side office\u2014I couldn&amp;#039;t afford a taxi. And there was this little gypsy woman. I started flirting with her! I wasn&amp;#039;t aware of her reputation.&amp;quot; After he left, a fax came from the Miami Vice office asking Timmermann to find someone to play an IRA terrorist. &amp;quot;Bonnie called me up and said, `Listen, we need to get you a work permit. If you don&amp;#039;t get the part, I&amp;#039;m quitting the business!&amp;#039;\u2009&amp;quot; He laughs. &amp;quot;I call her my big little sister. She&amp;#039;s one of the greats. I&amp;#039;m so proud of her. That talent, that perception.&amp;quot; She had the gift from the get-go. Born in Manhattan, raised near Rockaway Beach, Timmermann was working a low-end job off Broadway at the Phoenix Theater in the &amp;#039;70s when the theater owner asked her to go out and cast Wendy Wasserstein&amp;#039;s play Uncommon Women and Others. She came back with newcomers Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Swoosie Kurtz, and Jill Eikenberry. &amp;quot;The plays I cast were televised on PBS, and people like Francis Ford Coppola and producer Fred Roos and Michael Mann called me to work for them.&amp;quot; Mann, who was then executive-producing Miami Vice, went on to direct films including Mohicans, Heat, The Insider, and most recently Public Enemies\u2014all of which are among the 68 films on her credit list. &amp;quot;It goes beyond having an eye for talent,&amp;quot; Mann says. &amp;quot;Bonnie&amp;#039;s fabulously ambitious and aggressive in discovering new people and having atypical ideas\u2014`Let&amp;#039;s go after Lee Iacocca! Don King! Leonard Cohen!&amp;#039;\u2014they all did Miami Vice. And she&amp;#039;s ferocious\u2014never lets up when she wants someone. I&amp;#039;ll say, `If you bring up that guy&amp;#039;s name one more time I&amp;#039;m going to toss you down an elevator shaft!&amp;#039; But when she&amp;#039;s insisting that hard, she&amp;#039;s right.&amp;quot;  FOR THE FULL STORY CLICK HERE TO BUY THE NOVEMBER WOMEN IN HOLLYWOOD ISSUE NOW!   MICKEY ROURKE &amp;quot;I put him in The Pope of Greenwich Village [1984]. He wanted to audition alone with the director, to exclude me from the casting session. With someone like Mickey, you have to earn his respect. But to know him is to love him. Years later when he was having a hard time getting hired, Tony Scott and I cast him in Man on Fire. Here&amp;#039;s the kind of human being he is: I had spoken to Mickey just after my father Joe had died unexpectedly. He knew my father was a boxer. Very soon, an iridescent shopping bag\u2014really flamboyant\u2014arrived. Inside was a boxing glove that every major boxer had signed for Mickey, from Spinks to Ali to Foreman. And he&amp;#039;d written on it: &amp;#039;To Bonnie, Joe loves you, he&amp;#039;s watching out for his little girl. Don&amp;#039;t worry\u2014everything will be okay. Love, Mickey.&amp;#039; The glove must have been one of his prized possessions, and I just started to weep.&amp;quot;  SCARLETT JOHANSSON [1992] &amp;quot;I had seen Scarlett in The Horse Whisperer, and I brought her in for An American Rhapsody, which I produced. There was a rawness about Scarlett that I loved, but I didn&amp;#039;t think it would come out in an audition so I told the director, &amp;#039;Just talk, fall in love, and give her the part.&amp;#039; She did. After the movie was over and we got some awards, we were together in New York and I told her about a movie I was producing that was loosely based on a Balzac story. She said she could do accents and she launched into a British accent. She said she could sing; and she can!&amp;quot;  ROBIN WRIGHT  &amp;quot;She came in to audition for State of Grace [1990]. Sean Penn, one of the leads in movie, had a huge hand in the casting. There was a reality when they read together, it felt like we were inside the movie. These actors made the room disappear. They played lovers in the film.&amp;quot;  ALEC BALDWIN [1992] &amp;quot;When I first met him he was so hard to reach, quite standoffish. He was initially intimidating. And incredibly handsome. He was very sure of himself. He knew that he had a lot to offer. I offered him the Daniel Day Lewis role in The Last of the Mohicans and he turned it down to do The Marrying Man with Kim Basinger. But then I had the opportunity to cast him in Glengarry Glen Ross and in this incredible ensemble he was a real standout. He was only on the screen for seven minutes and he&amp;#039;s the one people remember from the film. Actors today come in to audition and repeat his lines to me!&amp;quot;  TO SEE 30 MORE POLAROIDS OF NICOLE KIDMAN, BRAD PITT, GEORGE CLOONEY, HALLE BERRY, AND OTHERS, BUY THE NOVEMBER ISSUE NOW! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a9051/hollywood-icon-bonnie-timmermann-383721/>