When my Location doesn’t match the Casting Location

There’s a great job in Brussels.

But you live in Athens.

Should you submit or are you wasting your time (and theirs) in going for it?

Some jobs are marked as Local Hire Only. This means they will expect you to live in the same country (and possibly city).

The production will NOT expect to pay for your travel or accommodation and they might even require local hire for administrative/legal reasons (e.g. sometimes they get tax breaks or financial incentives if they hire local actors).

In other words, if it says Local Hire Only then don’t submit unless you are local.

Although European law says (basically) that anyone can submit to any job from anywhere, there are practical considerations to think about.

Whilst a high budget production will not think twice about the cost of flying an actor from Madrid to Prague for a shoot and putting them up in a hotel for a couple of weeks, a low budget production simply won’t have the money to do that.

Alongside that, there’s the consideration of your documents. If you have an EU/EEA passport then you can easily work in any EU/EEA country; if you are British or another non-EU/EEA passport holder then things get tricky.

So to help out, just follow this simple flowchart to see if it’s worth you submitting:

Of course the final decision is yours, but remember that it’s best to submit for a few suitable jobs, rather than a lot of unsuitable jobs.

In your submission letter, you need to explain to the production WHY they should consider you, especially because you are so far away from the production base.

Remember, it will cost them more to hire you (transport/accommodation) than a local actor… so why choose you?

To help them decide, in your submission email…

• Tell them where you live and acknowledge that the production is a long way off
• Tell them if you have accommodation in the location (perhaps someone you can stay with)
• Tell them if you are willing to travel at your own expense
• Let them know you can do a self-tape rather than a face-to-face audition

In other words, write a few words to let them know you are worth hiring for the job and are willing to help out if you can.