The Freelance Life

How one woman helped expose Seattle’s pool of actors to small roles that might get them noticed, or at least paid

Noreen Hobson | photo by Jennifer Adams

When Battle in Seattle, a feature film about the 1999 WTO riots, brought Charlize Theron, Woody Harrelson, Andre 3000 and Michelle Rodriguez to Seattle, hundreds of extras were needed to play the rioting masses.

Many of the extras working on such projects are represented by two Tacoma entrepreneurs: Noreen Hobson and Aaron Jacobs. Noreen runs LUX Talent, agenting actors and models; Aaron runs Reel Extras, a casting service that provides extras to film productions all over the state.

Before becoming an agent, Noreen found herself in need of one. As a high school student at Bellarmine Prep in Tacoma, she was invited to shoot with a fashion photographer. The photos were strong enough to land an agent. Thin, striking and with beautiful porcelain skin, she found consistent modeling work through high school and college.

Noreen knows all too well that modeling is an unforgiving business. She worked for three years as a “fit model” for Nordstrom – basically, she was a living mannequin. She tried on clothes and commented on the fit, and designers made adjustments as needed. “They sometimes forgot I wasn’t a mannequin,” Noreen said. “More than once I got stuck with a pushpin.”

At one point, the designers created a “Noreen mannequin” for days she was unavailable. “It was a headless, footless Noreen. They called her ‘the big lady’ right in front of me,” she laughed.

In no way would you expect anyone to describe Noreen (or the Noreen mannequin, for that matter) as “big.” Yet when a bad stretch of illness caused Noreen to drop twenty pounds in a month she was let go. She was the wrong fit.

At the age of twenty-five, Noreen changed career paths from model to agent. “My agent thought I would be the right person to buy and take over her agency,” Noreen said. Soon she was running the agency that had previously represented her. Two years later she bought two more agencies and assembled them into a single company: LUX Talent, which represents five hundred Seattle and Tacoma models and actors.

The work gives her the opportunity to “help people define and achieve their dreams. People ask if I think they ‘have what it takes.’ Honestly, I think they just want someone to believe in them,” she says. “Sometimes they have one idea when they walk in the door and we can take a look and see other gifts.”

Recently Noreen met with a sixteen-year-old girl who dreamed of becoming a fashion model. To the untrained eye the girl was simply cute and mousy, but Noreen saw her as having an excellent shot at getting work as a  “regular teenager.” Anything else would have to wait until the girl’s braces came off. It was probably not what the girl had in mind when she pictured the glamorous model’s life. But that’s where the work was, especially in the Seattle market. Her mom just wanted to know where she had to drive her next.

“We represent people of all shapes and sizes,” Noreen says. “The tall, thin models that people think of when they think of the business are a very, very small part of the entertainment industry and of LUX talent. There are tons of opportunities for people with a variety of skills and body types.”

Instead of trying to force her clients into boxes, Noreen works to connect them with jobs that fit them. But even then, “you have to be prepared to take nine ‘no’s for every ‘yes,’” she says. She tells her clients that it’s seldom about being the best (though being the best can help). But it’s always about being “right” for the story and the director’s vision.

This past year, Noreen has been spending more time in New York. As her East Coast network grows, she hopes to open even more doors for local talent.
She also connects clients to one another. When two actors she represented both expressed an interest in opening a service to provide extras, Noreen introduced them. Reel Extras, now the go-to casting service for extras in Washington, was born.

Since its first job — finding “scurvy pirate types” for a History Channel shoot in Bellingham — Reel Extras has handled extras and stand-ins for many of the major productions that have come into town, including Grey’s Anatomy and — their biggest project to date — Battle in Seattle.

“Movies don’t work without extras,” partner Aaron Jacobs says. “You can’t sell it. If it’s a coffee shop, you need people at other tables, people coming in the door, baristas making coffee.” And if it’s a riot scene, like Battle in Seattle, you need streets thronging with protesters and cops, and plenty of fake tear gas to go around.