Marketing yourself as an actor

None of this advice is ours and the page says whose it is. Every point comes from a video indexed on Acting Craft, our free searchable library of acting advice on YouTube, and each links to the video it came from. We chose which videos to pull from and what order to put them in.

Three things are deliberately not here, because they have pages of their own: the demo reel, the audition itself, and the detail of what goes on your website.

No single thing books the job

Start here, because it reframes everything below. A website will not get you hired on its own. Neither will a headshot on its own, or a reel on its own. Each is one tool in the arsenal and is judged as one. Casting director Amy Jo Berman's answer to "do I need a website" is no, and her answer to "should I have one" is yes. Source.

Stop measuring your results against other actors. Outcomes vary with union status, age range, ethnicity, headshot and reel quality and special skills. Asking for feedback is useful. Comparing outcomes is not. Source.

The headshot

A bad one can outweigh good acting. It is your business card at auditions and when seeking representation. If it does not show who you are or what you should be submitted for, you may never get in the door and the skill never gets seen. Source.

Shoot how you are perceived, not how you wish you looked. Aaron Marcus lists what he books plainly: doctor, lawyer, real estate agent, teacher, scientist, dad, principal, therapist, social worker. Whether the warmth is actually true of him is irrelevant. It is how he is read, so it is what he shoots. Source.

Everything comes out through the eyes. Plenty of headshots have a great smile and dead eyes, because nothing was going on in the actor's head when the photographer asked for a smile. During the session, think about specific people you care about, so the warmth you are selling actually turns up. Source.

Wardrobe should work like nice wallpaper. If anyone says they love the shirt or the earrings, the clothes have won and you have lost. In the shot Marcus liked best, nobody looks at the blue Oxford shirt. Source.

A beautiful location can kill a headshot. Trees, flowers and mountains make a great picture and a bad headshot, because the eye goes to the scenery. Marcus scrapped one he loved because agents felt the stone archway behind him competed with his face. He prefers starting indoors for control over hair and squinting, then going outside once he has something he likes. Source.

You have to look like the photo you send. Actors are called in off the headshot. Marcus watched a casting director hold up an actor's outdated photo and tell him she did not know who he was, that this was the man she brought in, and not to come back until he looked like the picture. Source.

Research your category, but do not copy a pose. Marcus studied the headshots of successful actors in his category, then borrowed one and asked a photographer to reproduce the expression, wardrobe and lighting. Agents told him he looked dead and would be perfect only for a corpse. Source.

Use the photographer's makeup artist, and cut costs somewhere else. Somebody who already knows that photographer's lighting is worth the money, for men and women both, because you cannot watch yourself during a session and the photographer is busy looking elsewhere. If the budget is tight, print fewer copies instead. Also pick a photographer who can relax you. Source.

Print far fewer than you used to, but still print. Marcus once ordered 1,500 to 2,000 copies. Now he prints 200 to 250 at most, and suggests 50 for somebody starting out. Auditions still ask for a hard copy, and a mailed headshot gets looked at where an emailed image from a stranger often goes unopened. Matte is the current standard, partly because glossy holds fingerprints. Source.

Carry at least two, and make them genuinely different. Hair down in one and up in the next does not count. The example given: clean shaven business professional in one, a bad boy look with some stubble in the other. Source.

Two or three on type, covering business, dressed up and casual. A business or office shot relevant to your type, a made up shot as if you were going out on a Saturday night, and a more casual one as if you were with friends. Even the casual one should still look nice, and they should all read as the same person. Source.

The casting profile

Submitting is easy. Getting called in is the profile. Pressing submit takes a second. The audition comes from what casting sees when they open the page, so the work is in the page. Source.

An empty profile is more common than you think. New clients regularly turn up with nothing filled in. Complete every field: statistics, measurements, special skills, resume. Some roles carry specific measurement requirements, and a blank field means you cannot be matched to them no matter how right you are. Source.

One headshot showing how you would be cast today. Not how you were cast years ago. The site, a completed profile, current contact details and that one image are the baseline everything else is added to. Source.

Set your email preferences deliberately. They control how the site sends you breakdown notices, and your contact details are how casting reaches you when they want to bring you in. Both need to be right. Source.

Then go back and check the headshot against the type you are selling. Once the profile is live and submissions are going out, ask whether the image actually reflects what you are selling, and whether it has been bringing in auditions for that type. A few weeks of tracked submissions will tell you. Source.

Look for role types you submit for repeatedly and have no footage of. That absence is one of the concrete things to fix next. Source.

Union profiles have a higher bar. Fewer union roles post, they pay better, and the competition assumes professional level work. Your headshots need to be professionally shot and tied to your type. No Facebook pictures. Source.

Know which people cast your type, and build those relationships. When you submit to their breakdowns you are a known name rather than a blind submission. Source.

Which casting site to actually pay for

Joining every site is not the plan. Paying for all of them gets expensive fast and most working actors are on a few. The question is not how many you carry but whether the two or three you pay for are the right ones. Source.

Name the goal first. More auditions, footage for a reel, and paid work are three different goals and different sites serve them. Then be honest about what work you would actually accept, because a site full of jobs you would turn down is doing nothing for you. Union status narrows it again. Source.

Where the categories of work actually live. Student films: CAZT, Backstage and Actors Access, with Casting Networks and LA Casting worth a look. Theater: Backstage and Actors Access, the narrowest category on the list. Commercials: Casting Networks and the commercial focused sides platforms. Features and shorts: Hollywood Casting and Film, plus CAZT, Backstage and Actors Access. Source.

Self submitting is not how you get network television. Primetime and cable episodic roles are largely closed to it unless you are going after background or union recreation work. The television roles that do post are the unusual ones, where casting wants something specific enough that it is hard to fill from an agent's roster. Source.

The named sites, with what each one claims for itself. Actors Access, free to join and in business since 1971, serving a long list of markets beyond Los Angeles. Backstage, over fifty years old. Now Casting, also free to register. Casting Networks, started 2002, the family that includes LA, NY and SF Casting and reaches Australia and the UK. Casting Frontier, 2006, covering a dozen markets. CAZT, which includes self tape space and casting feedback. Hollywood Casting and Film, where filmmakers register free and actors pay. Source.

One specific piece of arithmetic worth knowing. A Showfax membership at $68 a year removes the per submission fees on Actors Access, which otherwise run $2 a submission and up to $5 with media attached. It also includes sides at no extra cost, which doubles as a practice library. Source. Prices are quoted as the video gave them and may have moved.

Submitting

Your job in a submission is to serve the project. Because clicking submit takes a second it is easy to do it without care. Judge each one by whether it helps casting fill the role or costs them time. Source.

Read the whole breakdown first. Notices list very specific needs, a special skill or a wardrobe requirement like providing your own uniform. Submitting without it wastes casting's time and says you did not read to the end. Same for a breakdown that states it will be cast from self tapes: do not submit if you are not set up to make one. Source.

Write your restrictions down before you start scrolling. Clear rules let you skip fast instead of deliberating on each notice. The examples given: no infomercials, no commercials below a pay rate you set, no roles involving eating meat if you do not eat meat. Writing them down matters because you are usually submitting while doing something else. Source.

Check at the same time every day. A fixed schedule makes it a habit rather than something you fit in when you remember. At minimum, check before bed. Source.

Three times a day is the fuller version. Once in the morning by noon at the latest, again around three or four, then a final pass between 8pm and 10pm. That gets you submitted within twelve hours, well inside the twenty four hour window Breakdown Services recommends. Refreshing hourly does no harm but is probably not the best use of your time. Source.

Study your own breakdowns for three or four weeks rather than copying a schedule. Every site, market and union status produces a different flow. Broadly: Mondays are heaviest and it tapers through the week, Saturday is quietest. Union actors get few or none at the weekend. Non-union actors get some on Saturday, mostly rush calls to work that same day. Source.

Casting's turnaround is fast, so answer email fast. Set up a way to see audition messages quickly, so a slow reply on your end does not hold everybody up. Source.

Somebody else can do the scrolling. One video reviews a paid service that submits on an actor's behalf inside rules you set, blocking out dates, restricting to union projects, or accepting non-union work only above a rate you choose. It is explicitly not an agency, takes no commission, and the actor's job becomes accept or decline. Source. Noting plainly that this one is a paid third party service and the video is a review of it. We have no relationship with them and this is not a recommendation. A parent or an assistant does the same job. Source.

Then measure it, because feelings about a site are unreliable

Log the site, the project, the role and the headshot. Every time. Over a year that gives you a picture of every submission across every service you pay for. Source.

Your volume is probably lower than you assume. Tracking shows how often you actually submit and whether you do it consistently. Many actors find the number is far below what they thought. Source.

The record tells you which headshot is doing the work. Because each entry names the image you sent, a pattern emerges about which one gets you called in and for what. The same audit applies to your footage. Source.

Divide auditions by submissions, per site. That is the whole calculation. One to two auditions per 50 to 100 submissions is normal, which is a return of roughly 1% to 4%. It sounds small and it is the baseline to expect. Above it is excellent. Source.

A weak return is a signal to change the profile, not just to quit. Below that range, adjust the materials before canceling the subscription. And weigh the kind of auditions you are getting, not only the count. Source.

Note which casting offices bring you in. That list is what you work from when you build those relationships over time. Source.

Your own site, and why it is not IMDb

Sending people to IMDb hands your visitors to advertisers. Berman's suggestion is to go and look at your own page: your face, a few words, then advertisements and auto playing video around the edges. Those exist specifically to pull the viewer somewhere else. On your own site people see what you want, in the order you choose. Source.

Industry people click links exactly like everybody else. Producers, directors and casting directors behave online the way you do: click, watch, move on, usually without liking or commenting. People are opening your material whether you know it or not. Source.

Email only, never your phone number. An agent's instruction, and the reason given is blunt: you are becoming a public person and stalking is a real and growing problem in this business. Name your agent and give their number instead, which routes serious enquiries correctly and signals you are represented. Source.

Carry far more photos than your agent can send. An agent submits one image, maybe two. Your site can hold a range: different clothes, different registers, different situations. That is the single thing it gives casting that a submission cannot. Keep all of them professional, nothing you would not want a production company to see while deciding whether you are a risk. Source.

Make it findable under your own name. The site only works if somebody who has just heard your name can search it and land there. Check that yours actually does. Source.

Put testimonials in text, not in a screenshot. A quote saved as a picture cannot be read by a search engine, so praise trapped in a graphic does nothing for how findable you are. Source.

The audit findings that keep recurring. A layout that does not adapt to a phone. Animations that serve no purpose, custom cursors and text that resizes on hover. Images a visitor cannot click and broken images in the footer. Blue captions on purple, which some visitors cannot read at all. And when your manager says rebuild, listen: being fond of your current site is not a reason to keep it. Source.

Repeatedly telling people to visit does not work. Nobody stumbles onto your site, and posting "check out my website" over and over is not your best shot. Put the link in your bio, put the address in your header art, pin a welcome post, and share other people's work instead of asking for the click. If the connection is real they get curious and come over on their own. Source.

IMDb, which you still need

Industry people look you up there first. A bare profile with no photo reads as somebody who is not serious, and IMDb Pro is the account that lets you manage what appears. SAG-AFTRA members should pull the discount code from the union site before subscribing. Source.

You can add credits nobody attached you to. With Pro you upload your own resume credits. Theater does not populate automatically, so add it yourself. IMDb marks them as submitted by the profile owner and they still tell people what you are doing. When a credit is missing from a project that did post, use the submission tool: one actor noticed her episode was listed without her name, filed it, and it went up. Source.

Put a working way to reach you on the page, and use the gallery. Your agency if you have one, personal contact details if you do not. A website or email is enough if a phone number feels like too much. You can load a large photo gallery and attach video, so somebody checking your credits can see the work in the same place. Source.

Keeping the inbox usable

Breakdowns do not belong in your general inbox. Filter them into their own folder or give them a dedicated address. Keeping them out of the main view speeds up the pass and protects your head space when you sit down to submit. Source.

Build the filter from an email you already have. Select the breakdowns, choose "Filter messages like these," then "Create filter with this search," tick "Skip the Inbox" and apply a new label. Tick "Also apply filter to matching conversations" to sweep the backlog. One warning from the video: that step also pulls messages back out of the trash. Source.

Run your acting address as an alias, not a second login. Settings, Accounts and Import, then "Add another email address" under Send mail as. After verifying, a From dropdown appears in every compose window. You can then give each address its own signature. Source.

Number and color your labels so sorting is visual. A leading number holds the order, and a color assigned through the three dot menu means you can identify an email without reading the subject. Archive rather than delete, and mark something unread when you want the label to go bold with a count. Undo send defaults to five seconds, so push it to ten or twenty. Source.

Building an audience of your own

Content means more than social posts. Keena Ferguson defines it broadly: what you put on socials, but also short films, pilots, theater, PSAs and commercials. The same steps apply whichever one you are making. Source.

Know your why, because it is what gets you through the hard part. It is not marketing copy. It is what you return to when a project goes wrong, and it is what lets you speak passionately enough that collaborators want in. People join projects when they understand why you need to make them. Source.

Random content attracts random people. Heidi Dean's warning: actors jump on whatever trend is hot without tying it to anything they believe. Chasing what is hot also kills the fun, because you end up creating out of obligation. Source.

Market before you create, not after. Finishing in a bubble and then announcing it means the audience has no idea who you are. Build the community while you are still making the thing. If the project speaks to skateboarders, be in connection with skateboarders long before launch day. Source.

Your project is not for everybody. Get specific about who buys your jar of jam: where they live, when and why they buy, how they find it. Being specific does not lock other people out, it tells them what to expect. The shortcut to identifying that audience is to research your comparables. Source.

Give yourself a deadline and make it nonnegotiable. Called the most important point of that session. Artists procrastinate and get stuck in perfectionism, so set a daily time to write, a time to create, and a fixed delivery date, or none of the rest produces anything. Source.

And a mailing list is the one audience nobody can take from you. One video walks through connecting Mailchimp to an actor site with an API key, after which a signup form appears on the site and the new subscribers show up in the list with API as the source. Source. Disclosure: that video is about our own website builder, so treat it as a walkthrough of one product rather than neutral advice. The underlying point stands whatever you build on. Followers live on a platform you do not control. An email list does not.

Everything above is attributed and none of it is ours. Prices, percentages and the lists of which site carries which work are quoted as the speakers gave them and will have moved. Check before you pay for anything. If we have summarized somebody badly, tell us.