SANTA CRUZ >> One crucial part of when a movie starts to come to life is in the casting process. A lot of work goes into determining which actors should play which part from the leading roles to the extras, and it is the casting director who plays an important role in these decisions.

This is a responsibility that Judith Bouley has taken on for nearly 40 years. The Santa Cruz native has cast more than 40 major movies, from “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” to Adam McKay’s star-studded satire “Don’t Look Up,” and her job has taken her all over the globe and allowed her to have some unforgettable experiences along the way. She has now compiled those experiences, good and bad, into a memoir titled “Casting Glances,” which will be released Thursday.

Bouley said her desire to write the book stemmed from having so many unbelievable adventures, even beyond Hollywood.

“I feel like I’ve created families all over the world,” she said. “I was full of so many astonishing moments — some very friendly, some tragic — and working with some of the finest filmmakers. … I had so many adventures, I was just pushed to tell the story.”

Bouley grew up a self-described military brat. When stationed in Japan while her father was serving in the Air Force, she saw “West Side Story,” which made her fall in love with movies. However, she did not initially want to work in the film industry and instead had aspirations of being a social worker. She moved to Santa Cruz in 1979 where she worked for Child Protective Services until she was laid off in 1984. She later got a job as a supervisor but quit after finding how little she enjoyed doing statistical analysis.

Around this time, Bouley also volunteered with the Santa Cruz Film Festival, and the crew of a movie called “Creator” starring Peter O’Toole was about to start shooting scenes in town in 1985. Bouley was hired for $75 a day to assist the casting director and wear a walkie talkie. She recalled receiving a memo from O’Toole with such demands as a one-bedroom suite in a hotel no higher than the fifth floor, an airplane with a smoking section, and a house to rent no more than 15 minutes from the set. He also wrote that he did not like the color brown, and the car loaned to him had to be a Ford Fairmont or Granada — but not a brown one.

“I wore a brown jumpsuit on the first day,” she said with a laugh.

Bouley’s first major casting assignment was the Joel Schumacher vampire film “The Lost Boys,” which was largely filmed in Santa Cruz and which Bouley cast five speaking roles and 2,200 background actors. She also did location casting in Santa Cruz for “Killer Klowns from Outer Space” and Monterey for “Star Trek IV,” which had scenes filmed at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Her other credits include “The Perfect Storm,” “Jurassic World,” “Road to Perdition,” “Basic Instinct,” “Arachnophobia,” “Deep Impact,” “Cast Away,” “Larry Crowne,” “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” and “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.” She has worked with such notable directors as Robert Zemeckis, Peter Weir and Sam Mendes and counts Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Leonardo DiCaprio and Colin Farrell among her co-workers.

Among the many big names she has worked with, Bouley said it was a particular treat to meet Meryl Streep, whom she worked with on “Don’t Look Up.”

“Meryl Streep’s a genius,” she said. “The room’s black and white, and she walks in, it turns into Technicolor.”

One memory that stands out for Bouley was working on Weir’s 2010 film “The Way Back” set in a gulag in Siberia following the Soviet invasion of Poland. A casting call was done in India where the entire village turned out, including a 17-year-old mother and her 3-year-old son, who was wearing bright white pajamas. Bouley felt the two were perfect, but there were concerns the bright white would mess with the light, so costumer Joe Cigliano dyed a muslin in rusty wine barrels and took it to a tailor from Mumbai who created a new outfit for the boy within 20 minutes.

“Peter ended up using it in the opening scene in India,” she said. “Following my instincts, that’s really key.”

Bouley also recalled working on “The Polar Express,” Zemeckis’ 2004 motion capture-animated film based on the popular Chris Van Allsburg book. Zemeckis called requesting acrobats who could be transformed into high-flying elves in the final cut through motion capture, so Bouley went to the San Francisco Circus Center and filmed the students doing acrobatic feats. Bouley was asked by Master Lu Yi if she wanted to climb the trapeze, and she said yes, and climbed up to a narrow platform where she would be pushed as a bar came near her.

“I just stood there like a stalactite,” she said. “By then, I’m in Heaven. I just move my body, and my heart follows. Finally, I fell to the net, and in ‘Casting Glances,’ I say ‘It’s a bit like filmmaking. You pray something good’s gonna come, and it’s a lot like a love affair.’”

Not all experiences were positive. Bouley often felt lonely and depressed during gigs, she lost her grandmother while working in Argentina on “Evita” and lost her longtime best friend Dick Broder to suicide as she was working on “Road to Perdition.”

“I just lived up in the air,” she said. “I’d be on one location in Buenos Aires and then I’d FedEx my dirty underwear to Bulgaria, and then it was Groundhog Day.”

Bouley likened these situations to a phoenix rising from the ashes, something she believes readers will relate to.

“All of us slam into the wall, all of us fall into the quicksand,” she said. “It’s about being tenacious, it’s about being gentle, and it’s about seeing forward and swimming with all your might to get out of that quicksand. When I do my next movie, I’m not gonna not be in touch with my family and friends like I often was in the past.”

“Casting Glances” will be available on Amazon and BarnesAndNoble.com Thursday.