A movie turns casting director Jane Krask to DEF
The movie was called Inside Moves. Since the film centered around a group of disabled people who regularly gathered in a neighborhood bar, the director wanted to cast actors with real disabilities. It fell to Jane Krask to find them.
A renowned Hollywood casting director who worked on a rather impressive list of movies during her 20-year career — including ET, The Godfather 2, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Chinatown, to name a few — Krask recalls casting Inside Moves as a very profound experience.
“It was heartbreaking. We met people with every conceivable disability: people without limbs, people who had no hands, no arms, no legs. But those who affected me most were the blind people,” Krask says. “You start to think about the “what if’s”: what if I lost limbs? what if I lost my ability to move? … I realized the one thing I was most frightened of — the one thing I didn’t think I could cope with — was losing my sight.”
The experience left her wanting to do everything she could to make sure that didn’t happen. She didn’t have to look far. Her cousin, whom she had idolized her entire life, happened to be the medical director of The Discovery Eye Foundation: Dr. Anthony Nesburn. She called and told him she wanted to get involved.
Krask supports a number of causes, including those related to homelessness and pet adoption, among others, but she is adamant about supporting medical research. “Without research, how are we going to find cures? It’s a no-brainer,” she says. She is a strong believer that stem-cell research will yield immeasurable benefits and applauds the ground-breaking work DEF-supported scientists do in this area. She has been a DEF donor since 1984 and is a Vision Legacy member.
While Krask is proud to support her beloved cousin’s life work, she is characteristically honest about the main reason behind her unwavering support of DEF’s work in preventing and curing blindness: “I am passionate about it, because I am scared.”
Posted April 2012