Barkhad Abdi Captain Phillips Star & Adeso Ambassador Showcases The Magic From A Random Casting Call

Barkhad Abdi Captain Phillips star and Adeso ambassador is a reminder to many aspiring actors that one good role is all it takes to make or a break a career, and it could come from a random casting call.

In an age of acting coaches, multiple sites and programs promising Hollywood success, and yes, even world-renowned mailing lables, attending a cold casting call you see on a TV screen or an ad notice can still be worth a try.

It’s helpful to remember that the Somali-American actor was driving limousine for a living and was involved in directing some music videos, and had zero acting experience, when he a respondd to a cold casting call he saw on TV.

“Yeah. It came on TV, you know? I was just at my friend's house. I knew the story, but I didn't even know exactly the story. So it just comes on TV -- Tom Hanks, local TV, local Somalis -- cold casting was going on. So I go there and there's about 700 people or more there. Yeah, and it's a long line. I had over 100 people ahead of me,” Abdi shares in an interview with the Huffington Post.

“And I write my name and when it came to me they gave me a paper saying, ‘OK, you study this part. You study the lines and you come back tomorrow.’ The next day, I come back and they said we either can call my own group or they'll put us in different groups.”

He decided to call his own group and practiced. After several auditions, they ended up meeting Paul Greengrass, the film’s director, who then told him and his group that he got the part. Abdi says that he has never acted before “Captain Phillips.”

The film he took part in eventually became a blockbuster hit and his role earned him accolades and nominations from prestigious award-giving bodies. He won Great Britain’s equivalent of the Oscar’s as a supporting actor and he was invited and was present at the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild, and the Academy Awards where he also earned a nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

It’s easy to qualify Abdi’s break as a one time thing, but the good news kept rolling for the newly-minted resident of Los Angeles. To date, he is expected to be in three projects, according to IndieWire’s story below.

“And Abdi, who picked up an Oscar nomination this year, for his supporting role in Captain Phillips, has already banked one starring role, playing famous South African marathon runner, Willie Mtolo, in an upcoming historical drama centered on his life, and, more recently, joined the cast of another project - Judd Apatow's Trainwreck.

Now we can add a third project to his burgeoning slate: Eye in The Sky, a thriller set in the morally murky world of military drones, which will be directed by Oscar winning South African director Gavin Hood (Tsotsi).”

All these success could be attributed to the fact that Barkhad Abdi took the time to respond to a casting call despite lacking any acting experience.