This role would test anyone

On the kitchen table in Vittoritto's small, dark home, Highsmith spread out the portraits. Hair up, hair down. Pretty girl smiling in a shirt, tough girl glaring in a tank top. "You do well as the girl next door," Vittoritto said, "but I don't think we should overlook troubled. This one," she pointed to one with a knowing look, "is more single than momish. We definitely need mom for commercials." A cat jumped on the table and settled in.

The chosen photos will be sent to a website that matches actors with casting directors. The new dominance of electronic weeding, although enabling casting directors to view more actors for available parts, has also increased the competition. About 450 actors vied for Highsmith's "Ghost Whisperer" role, said Gary Marsh, president of Breakdown Services, an Internet matching service. An audition for a minor part on a big TV show such as "Lost" will attract as many as 1,500 applicants.

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On Wednesday, a day off for Highsmith, Sterling and Mikey Myers, a friend and managing director of Ruskin Group Theatre Co., stopped in for lunch at Back on Broadway, a Santa Monica cafe owned by Fred Deni, a friend, sometime actor and board member of the theater group. It's the type of place where most servers are actors and customers can be seen using two cellphones at once. More friends, including Sterling's manager, Devon Jackson, wandered in, prompting hugs and kisses all around.

That morning, Highsmith had driven to downtown Los Angeles to visit a friend's son being held, unfairly she said, in the Los Angeles County jail. Then she drove back to meet the others and shop for acting class supplies and bikes. After a stop at Costco, they wound up at Helen's Cycles, a bicycle shop where the salesman had just shot a Discovery Channel program in which an obese woman was taught how to ride a bike.

Highsmith and Sterling met on the callback for "Fractalus," a love story in space, in which they were cast as the two leads. Since neither is big on clubbing (Highsmith would rather knit and doesn't drink), they tend to spend their evenings watching movies on TV. Sterling, 35, lives in a studio apartment and despite steady work, has hit the wall -- the point when frustration over job-to-job existence forces an actor to ask himself: should he stay or should he go?

He was actually considering a job about 18 months ago at his favorite Montana dude ranch but ultimately realized his creative heart was elsewhere. Tapping his chest he said "something in here" told him to return to town.