straight from central casting
- idiom
- Informal
:
sacado de un casting
- The character she played was so charming and witty, he seemed straight from central casting.
Examples
-
"He's straight from central casting," I agreed.
Fiction book (1992) -
With a perfectly tailored suit and confident demeanor, he looked straight from central casting.
-
Tall and imposing, the actor was straight from central casting for the role of a villain.
Antonyms
How Typical
Surface Forms
Morphology
straight + from + central + casting
The phrase is partially compositional — 'straight from' suggests direct origin and 'casting' + 'central' points to a casting agency — so learners who know the words can infer someone was 'picked' for a role. However, the idiomatic sense of looking perfectly stereotypical or as if deliberately chosen (based on the cultural reference to Hollywood 'central casting') requires background knowledge and is not fully predictable from the parts alone.
Etymology
Straight from central casting comes from old Hollywood casting offices called central casting that supplied ready-made actor types for films. If a person or place looked exactly like one of those types, they were called 'straight from central casting', so today the phrase means 'a perfect fit' or 'very typical'.