WE
ARE
BEAST
A creative casting team foraging for your casting needs.
BEAST hunts humans.
For when you need more than beauty…
Tough cookies, clever clogs, families that look like peas in a pod. Top bananas, cool cats, really tall chicks with six foot plaits.
Whatever it is, we got you.
New faces. Fresh eyes. Old Souls. We all bring something to the table and together...
we are BEAST.
LESLEY
ANNIE
Lesley has worked at the forefront of commercial casting for over thirty years. She is as Notting Hill as the Carnival. Quite frankly, with her array of thick-rimmed glasses and red lippy, she’s approaching icon status.
Lesley’s first company was a talent agency just off Portobello Road. Famed for shaking up the old style, they trawled their locale (and then the rest of London) for extraordinary characters. They found remarkable photographers to capture them, and began to produce a pioneering collection of colour-coded catalogues, gathering all manner of weird and wonderful within their pages
Broadcasting were the new kids on the block, known for interesting, inclusive casting and finding comedy in real people’s performances. Always looking for truth and authenticity in faces, this talent for capturing fresh moments on screen soon found Lesley working with actors.
Lesley embarked on a casting odyssey as captain of Lesley Beastall Casting.
For Lesley, BEAST is a salute to those beginnings and a platform for a group of young casting talent to spread their wings in the industry. Lesley has enjoyed the most wonderful partnerships with so many great directors from across the globe. She has travelled the world, street casting and working as a casting consultant. She has laughed every day.
Lesley’s mentor, the late advertising maverick Paul Arden, wrote this for her: “Lesley Beastall. I am nice and I am good - or that’s what people tell me”
Being Lesley’s daughter, Annie has literally grown up under the casting desk. Raised in Notting Hill, surrounded by the myriad of wonderful characters found within the roster of Broadcasting, and later finding her voice singing the blues, Annie’s at home with the creative crowd.
Working closely with Lesley for over a decade, Annie is drawn to the aesthetic side of casting, taking several trips around the world to hunt down the wonderfully weird or exquisitely quirky; the specially skilled and off-the-wall performer. Whether you’re looking for a gin-drinking granny, a potty-mouthed nose picker with a penchant for poo jokes, or a dancing contortionist punk who plays the oboe, Annie will dig them out for you. Show her a model agency, and she’ll find you the coolest kids on the block. Man may be an evasive beast, but Annie has a very particular set of skills.
She loves working with children, and has been responsible for planting a number of onscreen family trees. Whether she’s casting a Christmas ad in Glasgow, or winning musical chairs at her goddaughter’s fifth birthday party, she’s equally enthusiastic.
SALLYANNE
JAMES
Roll Up! Roll Up! Meet the one-of-a-kind Sallyanne.
In her late teens, Sallyanne ran away to join the circus. She span plates, had poles pushed through her (erm, pardon?) and was flung through the air with the greatest of ease whilst touring the globe. Eventually, in her early twenties she landed in London, hanging up her sequin leotard for good and became an actress.
Nowadays Sallyanne splits her time between acting and casting. Her many experiences in front of the camera - from a cold air hangar in Norfolk to the hot deserts of Dubai - brings a calm and understanding of how to get the best out of actors. She loves being in the studio working with each individual to bring a script to life. Her eye for detail means she can pull out unique performances for each person.
A plate spinner to the last, Sallyanne has recently produced numerous music videos, short films and commercials with great success. She understands the importance of meeting the demands of each cog in this great machine we call film-making!
James is the newest horse in the Lesley Beastall Casting stable, and with a resplendent mane of golden hair, he’s quite the thoroughbred.
He grew up in Birmingham and you can take the boy out of Brum but you.. well, you get it… he’s a proud Brummy! He got a taste of the TV world at a young age with his camera operator Mum and it certainly tickled his taste buds and so, at 18, he moved to the big smoke and trained as an actor at Mountview. But it wasn’t long before he wanted to try the view from the other side of the casting desk. He was thrown in at the deep end with his first proper casting job; a Europe-wide search for Somali women for Warner Bros’ ‘Castle Rock’. And then from there he swam, freelancing for several casting directors before joining Lesley in July 2019.
James is an all-rounder in the casting office and is particularly passionate about LGBTQ+ projects, with a real knack for discovering new talent. He has the ‘casting eye’, which is rare, but not contagious - he can see things in an individual that the rest of the gang might miss. He loves working closely with actors and directors, and his time on the other side has honed his ability to make anyone entering the casting space feel comfortable, teasing out their most relaxed and true performances.
WE
ARE
BEAST
A creative casting team foraging for your casting needs.
BEAST hunts humans.
For when you need more than beauty…
Tough cookies, clever clogs, families that look like peas in a pod. Top bananas, cool cats, really tall chicks with six foot plaits.
Whatever it is, we got you.
New faces. Fresh eyes. Old Souls. We all bring something to the table and together...
we are BEAST.
LESLEY
Lesley has worked at the forefront of commercial casting for over thirty years. She is as Notting Hill as the Carnival. Quite frankly, with her array of thick-rimmed glasses and red lippy, she’s approaching icon status.
Lesley’s first company was a talent agency just off Portobello Road. Famed for shaking up the old style, they trawled their locale (and then the rest of London) for extraordinary characters. They found remarkable photographers to capture them, and began to produce a pioneering collection of colour-coded catalogues, gathering all manner of weird and wonderful within their pages
Broadcasting were the new kids on the block, known for interesting, inclusive casting and finding comedy in real people’s performances. Always looking for truth and authenticity in faces, this talent for capturing fresh moments on screen soon found Lesley working with actors.
Lesley embarked on a casting odyssey as captain of Lesley Beastall Casting.
For Lesley, BEAST is a salute to those beginnings and a platform for a group of young casting talent to spread their wings in the industry. Lesley has enjoyed the most wonderful partnerships with so many great directors from across the globe. She has travelled the world, street casting and working as a casting consultant. She has laughed every day.
Lesley’s mentor, the late advertising maverick Paul Arden, wrote this for her: “Lesley Beastall. I am nice and I am good - or that’s what people tell me”
ANNIE
Being Lesley’s daughter, Annie has literally grown up under the casting desk. Raised in Notting Hill, surrounded by the myriad of wonderful characters found within the roster of Broadcasting, and later finding her voice singing the blues, Annie’s at home with the creative crowd.
Working closely with Lesley for over a decade, Annie is drawn to the aesthetic side of casting, taking several trips around the world to hunt down the wonderfully weird or exquisitely quirky; the specially skilled and off-the-wall performer. Whether you’re looking for a gin-drinking granny, a potty-mouthed nose picker with a penchant for poo jokes, or a dancing contortionist punk who plays the oboe, Annie will dig them out for you. Show her a model agency, and she’ll find you the coolest kids on the block. Man may be an evasive beast, but Annie has a very particular set of skills.
She loves working with children, and has been responsible for planting a number of onscreen family trees. Whether she’s casting a Christmas ad in Glasgow, or winning musical chairs at her goddaughter’s fifth birthday party, she’s equally enthusiastic.
SALLYANNE
Roll Up! Roll Up! Meet the one-of-a-kind Sallyanne.
In her late teens, Sallyanne ran away to join the circus. She span plates, had poles pushed through her (erm, pardon?) and was flung through the air with the greatest of ease whilst touring the globe. Eventually, in her early twenties she landed in London, hanging up her sequin leotard for good and became an actress.
Nowadays Sallyanne splits her time between acting and casting. Her many experiences in front of the camera - from a cold air hangar in Norfolk to the hot deserts of Dubai - brings a calm and understanding of how to get the best out of actors. She loves being in the studio working with each individual to bring a script to life. Her eye for detail means she can pull out unique performances for each person.
A plate spinner to the last, Sallyanne has recently produced numerous music videos, short films and commercials with great success. She understands the importance of meeting the demands of each cog in this great machine we call film-making!
JAMES
James is the newest horse in the Lesley Beastall Casting stable, and with a resplendent mane of golden hair, he’s quite the thoroughbred.
He grew up in Birmingham and you can take the boy out of Brum but you.. well, you get it… he’s a proud Brummy! He got a taste of the TV world at a young age with his camera operator Mum and it certainly tickled his taste buds and so, at 18, he moved to the big smoke and trained as an actor at Mountview. But it wasn’t long before he wanted to try the view from the other side of the casting desk. He was thrown in at the deep end with his first proper casting job; a Europe-wide search for Somali women for Warner Bros’ ‘Castle Rock’. And then from there he swam, freelancing for several casting directors before joining Lesley in July 2019.
James is an all-rounder in the casting office and is particularly passionate about LGBTQ+ projects, with a real knack for discovering new talent. He has the ‘casting eye’, which is rare, but not contagious - he can see things in an individual that the rest of the gang might miss. He loves working closely with actors and directors, and his time on the other side has honed his ability to make anyone entering the casting space feel comfortable, teasing out their most relaxed and true performances.
the mothership
the mothership
