first call

English

Noun

first call (uncountable)

1. Priority on the use of somebody or something, especially an actor if required in a production.
   • 2000, Charles Foster, Stardust and Shadows: Canadians in Early Hollywood, page 51:

     Fairbanks obviously had the power to dictate because his contract, and an amended one with Griffith, gave him first call on me as a dentist while Griffith retained first call on my services as an actor.

   • 2004, Stephen Unwin, So You Want to be a Theatre Director?, page 77:

     In these conditions, however, you must be sensitive to the actor's need to do other work: you've got to let them go up for auditions and earn money in other ways, and only the most megalomaniac director thinks that he has 'first call' on his actors' time.

   • 2010, Ian Brown, From Tartan to Tartanry: Scottish Culture, History and Myth, page 169:

     Consequently, Harper argues, 'costume film-makers in Britain no longer had first call on their own classic novelists. […]

See also

• first bite of the cherry