Ann Brebner
Casting Director
Timaru born and raised, Ann Brebner began writing plays as a child, then studied psychology at Otago University. Hopes of a career in music or medicine were abandoned after she joined London’s Old Vic Theatre School. But it was in San Francisco that she made her mark — running the city’s biggest casting agency with Brit husband John, she found actors for local directors like George Lucas, and discovered Danny Glover. Brebner also directed plays, wrote a popular acting manual, and was instrumental in a five-year campaign to find a home for the California Film Institute. She passed away on 13 January 2017, at 93.
...you may die tomorrow, [or] you may be writing five more plays—and what encourages this is a secret of all creative work, which is being present in the moment because it may be all we have. Ann Brebner, in a November 2013 interview with newspaper The Pacific Sun
