“Ever heard of success by sending a script straight to an actor?”

So @JakeLasker tweeted this question to @Screenwritten [F. Scott Frazier] and myself:

ever heard of success by sending a script straight to an actor?

Frankly I could only think of one instance: Touching Home by Logan and Noah Miller. Found this interview. The relevant excerpt:

DIM: How did you meet Ed Harris, who played the role of your father in the film? And what made you decide that he was the right actor for that role?

LM: So, our dad knew about the script and he used to always ask us “when you guys gonna make our movie?” and we’d always say “we’re gonna make it soon.” And we visited him in jail shortly before he passed away…and he said “who’s gonna play me? He’s gotta be good lookin’!” And we said “Oh yeah, we’re gonna get Ed Harris to play you.” It was just a joke at that point. And then our dad passed away shortly after that and we just made a vow that we were going to tell the story. And we received a Panavision New Filmmaker Grant and went and shot this little two minute trailer. And then, we read in the San Francisco Chronicle that Ed Harris was coming to the Castro Theatre and that he was going to be doing an interview on stage. And so, we went there with our laptop that had the trailer on it, with our script in a manila envelope and we ended up sneaking backstage after the interview, and then, actually making our way into the alley and showing Ed the trailer in the alley. Then, he took the script and he called us nine days later.

So if someone says to you, “You will never succeed in getting an actor interested in your project by approaching them directly,” you’ve got Touching Home as a rule-breaker.

That said, I wouldn’t recommend this approach. Actors have [or at least try to have] private lives and flinging a script over the wall of their house [I know for a fact this has happened] or slipping a script under the divider in a public bathroom [I have heard of this happening] smacks of desperation and amateurism.

Anybody else heard of a writer achieving success by sending a script directly to an actor?

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