Casting Director Heidi Levitt Reveals the Moment She Knew She Had to Create ‘Walk With Me’

Heidi Levitt has spent more than 30 years casting films for acclaimed filmmakers such as Oliver Stone, Wim Wenders, Sally Potter, Alan Parker, Wayne Wang and dozens of others in a career that is, by any definition, stellar. She has worked on numerous Oscar winners — including The Artist, which won Best Picture in 2012 — and given the big break to more actors than we can list.

Levitt’s newest project, Walk With Me, is something different. She’s the writer, director and producer, telling a story as personal as it gets. Walk With Me tells her own family’s story, as her husband Charlie struggles with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. It is a searing, deeply moving film that pulls no punches and shows enormous courage in its storytelling.

Walk With Me recently had its world premiere at the Hamptons Film Festival and also played at the Woodstock Film Festival. The feature has more festivals lined up, including an AFI screening on October 27, and already has distributor interest. Levitt spoke to us from her summer house in Stowe, Vermont, right before returning home to Los Angeles.

Insights: Tips and Advice From Heidi Levitt

Actors should recognize the importance of networking and persistence when starting out, as shown by Heidi Levitt’s early career moves, such as reaching out to casting directors and leveraging her knack for recognizing talent.

Consider the value of diverse experiences in the industry, as Levitt’s background in news and her later experiences in casting and film production provided her with a unique skill set that contributed to her success.

Understand that personal stories can be powerful on screen. Levitt’s decision to make a film about her family’s experience with Alzheimer’s disease demonstrates the potential impact of drawing from one’s own life to create compelling narratives.

Be open to the evolution of your career. Levitt’s journey from casting director to filmmaker underscores the idea that one’s role in the entertainment industry can shift and expand over time, allowing for new creative opportunities.

Recognize the importance of de-stigmatizing difficult topics through film. By sharing her personal story, Levitt aims to open up conversations about Alzheimer’s disease, highlighting the power of cinema to address and humanize complex issues.

How did you get into casting?

I worked at CBS News during my first years out of college, and that time was the early part of independent film coming back to New York with Jim Jarmusch and the Coen’s Blood Simple and all of that. I was an election analyst for CBS and the New York Times, and to move up the ladder to be a producer, you needed to move to a smaller market, and I wasn’t ready to do that. At that point, I realized, “oh, there’s all this film stuff happening. Maybe I should go back into that because I had done internships and found casting.”

I read an article in Esquire magazine about casting and thought, “oh, that sounds interesting.” Then I saw Desperately Seeking Susan on a very early date with Charlie, and I recognized all of the actors in every little part because they were all people from off-Broadway theater. Janet Maslin wrote an article every Friday called At the Movies, and she talked about these young casting directors, Risa Bramon Garcia and Billy Hopkins. I looked them up, I wrote them a letter and got a job.

I got in on the ground floor in casting, and it was like a perfect match for me because I was good at knowing actors and knowing who people were. I didn’t know how to type, but I could put it together with who was who and how to do that, and I love to research a lot. They became famous, because at that moment, Juliet Taylor, who’s like our godmother of great casting directors in New York, she had recommended Risa and Billy to Alan Parker because Juliet was taking time off to be a mom.

Alan Parker made this film called Angel Heart, and I cast almost every part in that movie. Alan brought me to New Orleans, and I just learned so much. He loved that I would go into bars and pull people out. Casting is sometimes like cultural anthropology. It did prepare me in many ways for making this movie because I’m a really good researcher.

How did you hook up with Oliver Stone?

I applied to film school and AFI because I didn’t know anything about making films. I had started for Oliver Stone as a casting assistant on Wall Street, and he moved back to LA and was making Born on the Fourth of July. Suddenly, I became a person in L.A.

I worked with Oliver for 10 years, up until Nixon. He was very active in those years and the movies that we didn’t make that I did a lot of work on, like Evita, which ironically, Alan Parker made with Madonna. Alan wanted me to come back and finish that one, but I had had a baby by that point, and I’d already been in Buenos Aires for like, four months for Oliver making a very different version of the movie.

I would imagine that working for Oliver Stone during that period was very educational.

Oliver taught me the biggest lesson, which he said, the ones we didn’t make are still movies, too. Because they had their own lives, and we worked on them for a long time. And even if they didn’t happen, they did have something.

The list of movies you’ve worked on is extensive and impressive. Are there favorites?

I was a strong collaborator with Wayne Wang. I did Joy Luck Club, and I’ve produced movies for Wayne. Wim Wenders is a dream director to me. Even though I haven’t done any of the classics, I’ve done about five of [his films], and I love him.

I work with Sally Potter a lot. I became a producer to these people, to some of them, like Sally, again, I haven’t had the classics, but I’ve worked on many great movies, and Oliver, honestly, JFK is an amazing movie. Even though we sparred about so much of the history and stuff, he was a brilliant filmmaker, and I think he should be more recognized in some ways than I feel he is.

It’s a pretty amazing list of collaborators.

I’m so fortunate. I did the movie The Artist, which was huge. I love Diego Luna. I did Mark Ruffalo’s first movie as a director, Sympathy for Delicious. I feel like this film, in some ways, rests on the shoulders of everybody I worked with. Even someone like Victor Nuñez. I produced a movie of his last year. He’s a great filmmaker, undervalued, you know, but all of these people I’ve learned different things from.

That is a perfect segue to talk about Walk With Me. I’m curious about the decision to make the film in the first place, but also, clearly, having learned at the feet of all of these talented people, was there something in you saying it’s time for me to make a movie?

That’s a good point. It was not that I wanted to make a movie as a director. I know what’s involved as a director, the amount of energy and focus. I’m a full-time care person right now as well, and I have many abilities to juggle. I always saw myself as a storyteller, and I see myself wanting to tell personal stories that have a larger sort of framework around them.

How did that lead you to make what I imagine must have been the difficult decision to chronicle your own story?

When this happened to us, I found we were stigmatized and we were afraid to talk about it. I was thinking, “How’s my husband going to get another job? He can’t, and we need to a have purpose. I need to do something, and I need to talk about this because this is not just us.” And if I’m having trouble navigating it — and I’m tenacious, as you see in this movie — imagine what other people are going through.

This is so complicated and not understood, it needs to be broken down for people to understand. How do we live with this? So, I said to my family, “I need to make this.”

What is your goal here? To de-stigmatize Alzheimer’s?

I would say there are three. One is, I’m hoping that this is a story that is beyond this disease, because every family goes through some shitty thing that happens, and you have to figure out how to get through this. I don’t want it to just be about disease. I think it’s about a portrait of a family dealing with something hard, and it’s a love story.

We have our eye on the prize, no matter what happens and how hard it is, we still feel love and loyalty to each other. Then there’s the idea of de-stigmatizing, so people can talk about this disease, because this disease has been around for over 100 years and we have nothing to do with it.

There is this point of we’re all going to die of something. Our brains will deteriorate. There’s a certain level of what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable. We can do better. People are afraid to talk about this because this sense of losing ourselves is so scary.

Now that you have made this film, do you think you’ll direct again?

Yes, and they have a couple of things already that came out of the film that didn’t make it in that people are interested in for maybe a short doc. I like the form.

If you asked me what I wanted to do, I’d say,”I want to go to a small town and be the director of the local theater and put up the play, because that is my first love.” I do feel like now I could handle it, because if I can handle caretaking now and my kids are launched, I could do it.

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