Kat Dennings Recalls “Cruel” Casting Directors Saying She Wasn’t “Pretty Enough” And “Fat” At 12

Glenn Garner
·2-min read

After 25 years of acting, Kat Dennings has seen the entertainment industry become a much more inclusive place.

The Shifting Gears actress recently recalled casting directors being “very cruel” in her early years of acting, despite the fact they were “talking about a child.”

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“The time that I was auditioning and starting to act, it was a very different environment than it is now,” she told People. “There was not a lot of inclusivity at all. It was very harsh. There was a lot of extremely negative feedback and people would not hold back.”

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Dennings added, “It was pretty crazy thinking about it. I’m like, ‘How can anyone say that about a little kid? This is insane.’ For example, I was 12. I’d go into an audition and I’d do it, and my manager would call me and I’d be like, ‘How’d it go?’ And they’d be like, ‘Well, they thought you weren’t pretty enough and you’re fat.'”

The 2 Broke Girls alum said she kept a “very strong” outlook, choosing to ignore the judgments and believe they were wrong.

“That was my attitude,” explained Dennings. “For some reason, it didn’t break my spirit. I was like, ‘I’ll show them.’ I guess props to my parents, because they were like, ‘They’re idiots. Don’t listen to them.’ And I was like, ‘They’re idiots, I’m not.'”

Dennings said that the world is “much softer, kinder” and more understanding than the “completely insane” era of Hollywood in which she began acting. “There’s body positivity, there’s inclusivity, there’s representation, and there was none of that before. It was really gross,” she said.

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