How To Get Started in an Acting Career
by Ruth Kulerman
So you have a BA in theatre or you have taken some acting classes. You have headshots and a professional looking
resume. The next question is "HOW DO I START?"
If you're lucky, your university diploma will open doors for you via their showcases. Agents attend and one invites you to interview and sign.
(We will talk about interviews later.) So you’re all set. Right? Wrong!
Everyone begins with SELF-SUBMISSIONS, otherwise known as SELF-PROMOTION. Even those with signed agents must also go this route.
Self-submissions to whom? Find the Internet audition sites. Granted, many of their ads are for non-paying jobs but
those, too, have enormous advantages. They give you professional experience, presence, poise. You meet fellow actors who know people who know
people. There is always the possibility of a casting person being in the audience. They give you some credible resume credentials.
Where else do I find auditions? Backstage, a weekly industry publication, carries audition information. I personally prefer getting it
on the Internet. Go to their site and decide yourself. It’s a lifeline to auditions.
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Join the world's leading acting community and find acting articles, casting calls, audition notices, career
networking tools and links to SAG and AFTRA talent agents. Post your profile, submit your headshots/photos, resume and video clips online and be
discovered by casting directors and talent scouts around the world.
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A note about self-submissions: There are both effective and disastrous ways to self-submit, which we will talk about later. And there is no use
submitting a dreadful headshot or a sloppy cover letter in a sloppy envelope. That, too, we can discuss.
So you have submitted yourself for numerous projects and not received one request to come in and read. Why? Many
reasons, some which are out of your control. But you definitely can control the appearance of your resume, your cover letter, and your
submissions envelope. This is a profession about appearance and impressions.
Who else to submit to? Casting Offices. Buy the Ross Report and read it carefully. It will help you to understand more about each casting office
or each agent. Find out who specializes in casting film, who in theatre, in commercials, in background work. Then gear your SHORT cover letter to
their areas of casting. Submit to the NYC soaps and TV programs. They do indeed call people in from self-submissions.
Another valuable tool for getting auditions is your own web page. There are free sites that will post your headshot and your resume. Learn how to
self submit via an e-mail a link to your web page. Very few people will open an attachment so don’t send it unless the ad requests one. Also
watch out for e-mailed headshots. I once saw one the size of Montana. No one will tolerate that. Go the web page link route.
Go to open calls. Set goals for yourself. Five open calls a week, 15 submissions to ads, and 35 submissions to casting offices and agents. Then
after a week or so you must start the postcard follow up routine. Set a goal of 40-50 postcards a week
And last, pick three or four very good small theatre companies and write to them to volunteer your services. Don’t give up. I once “courted” a
fine small company for five years before they called me in to do a staged reading with them.
Summary: Even with an agent, you must find work yourself. Find the ads and self-submit. Send your headshots to casting offices, to agents, and to
locally based TV shows. Follow up everything with postcards at least once a month.
Getting started is daunting. But someone who says, “I’m not very good at self-promotion” had better have an uncle who is a studio head.
Self-promotion is what this business is mostly about. An actor’s major job is getting a job. And for several years those jobs usually come from
self-promotion. It is how to get started.
You work it. It works. I promise you.
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