Amanda Mackey Johnson

Amanda Mackey Johnson is one of the leading casting directors in Hollywood. She has helped cast over a hundred feature films, including and. Since the early 1990s, she has been casting in collaboration with Cathy Sandrich Gelfond. Since the early 2000s, Johnson and Gelfond have been working with Wendy Weidman, who began as a casting associate and is now a casting director in her own right.

Johnson won an Artios Award from the Casting Society of America (CSA) as casting director of the 1992 baseball comedy A League of Their Own. She has since earned seven additional nominations from the CSA, all shared by Cathy Sandrich Gelfond. These nominations were for the films While You Were Sleeping, The Opposite of Sex, For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story, Holes, The Cooler, and P.S. and the television series Unscripted. Two of these nominations (The Cooler and P.S.) were shared with Wendy Weidman.

Johnson began as a casting assistant on such films as The World According to Garp and Explorers; the latter film starred the likes of Robert Picardo, James Cromwell, and Dick Miller. Johnson's first film as a casting director was 1985's Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. Among the actors cast in this film were Joel Grey, Patrick Kilpatrick, Michael Pataki, and, most notably, star Kate Mulgrew. Johnson went on to cast other Star Trek regulars in a number of films: Gates McFadden in The Hunt for Red October, Rene Auberjonois in Inspector Gadget, Nichelle Nichols in Snow Dogs, and Patrick Stewart in The Game of Their Lives.

Following Star Trek IV, Johnson would again reunited director Leonard Nimoy for 1990s Funny About Love. Before Star Trek Nemesis, Johnson and Gelfond cast the two other films directed by Stuart Baird, 1996's Executive Decision and 1998's U.S. Marshals. Other movies cast by Johnson and Gelfond include Patriot Games, Of Mice and Men, The Fugitive, Species, Murder at 1600, The Man in the Iron Mask, Practical Magic, Frequency, We Were Soldiers, The Matador, United 93, Smokin' Aces, The Good Shepherd, and The Kingdom.

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Amanda Mackey Johnson