3 Steps to Avoiding the 'American Sniper' Plastic Baby Blunder

Bradley Cooper doing his best in American Sniper

With six Oscar nominations and a $105 million opening weekend, the narrative around Clint Eastwood’s new war film American Sniper should be nothing but positive, with unanimous kudos for the 84-year-old’s biggest box office hit yet.

Instead, the Internet is obsessed with a limp plastic baby.

In several scenes throughout the film, Bradley Cooper (who stars as the late Navy SEAL Chris Kyle) and Sienna Miller (his onscreen wife, Taya) gingerly handle a remarkably unrealistic-looking plastic infant, doing their best to animate the lifeless mass that’s meant to represent their daughter.

Related: Remember the Creepy Fake Baby From ‘Twilight: Breaking Dawn’?

As you can see in the GIF above, the baby is hard to ignore, even in a medium that requires the suspension of disbelief.

The writer of the film, Jason Hall, told the reporter Mark Harris in a tweet that has since been deleted that Eastwood went with the faux baby after the real human infant they had cast was sick on the day of the shoot.

But was a plastic baby really the only option?

Yahoo Movies got some tips for avoiding the Sniper mess from Jeremy Apody, a casting agent who wasn’t involved with Sniper, but who works with children and babies at the Abrams Artists Agency.

Step 1: Shoot in Los Angeles.

Children in California are eligible to work in TV, movie, and commercial shoots at fifteen days old, as long as they have a note from their doctor. Children younger than five months old can be on-set for up to two hours a day, which means that most casting directors look for twins or triplets.

With high demand for children actors, work permits are available over the counter at the California Entertainment Work Permit Unit in Van Nuys, CA, Apody says — meaning that, conceivably, a baby could be auditioned and cleared for work within a few hours.

“There are parents who are ready at the drop of a hat to audition and have paperwork,” Apody says. “We always require them to have a work permit on hand, because you never know when a job could shoot that day. That’s the most important thing, to get the work permit up to date, because you never know.”

Step 2: Use the Internet.

Children accepted by agencies have photos uploaded to secure casting sites, where casting directors can can post requests for babies.

“We don’t require professional head shots, just snapshot photos,” Apody says. “Casting directors then put out breakdowns online, looking for specific roles, specific types, and then we submit online through the digital casting sites.”

Step 3: Make sure you’ve got spares handy.

Hall, the Sniper screenwriter, said in the same tweet that the second baby they had cast never showed up. In order to avoid that fate, the production could’ve looked into triplets.

“It helps to have a baby that has a good disposition. On set, you’re waiting hours and hours, and that’s why they hire multiples,” Apody explains. “One will have a meltdown, so they sub another in. They’ll need rest or naps. It’s standard at that age for commercials — for babies and even toddlers, a lot of times they’ll hire multiples.”