Your Email Address

Not all emails are right for actors. And here’s why you should think carefully about the email you use when you contact casting directors and other industry professionals.

Email addresses to avoid

Cute email addresses might be fun between you and your friends, but trust us, they don’t look good when you’re submitting for an acting job.

So if your email address is anything like these, make sure to get a new address:

  1. sexybabe@example.com
  2. givemeajob@example.com

And always avoid numbers – they’re too easy to get wrong and they look cheap:

  1. benny367@example.com
  2. julia2008@example.com

Next, keep your address simple to spell. Even if this means not using your full name which could cause problems. Imagine trying to spell these out to someone at the other end of a poor phone line:

  1. dimetripapadopolonicous@example.com
  2. SalISmith@example.com

How did you read that last address? In the middle it’s lowercase-L then uppercase-i which look almost identical but are very different!

Keep it as simple as you can

If you can, make it your name so they’ll remember you:

  1. mareyjsmith@example.com
  2. johnjonesactor@example.com

ANd feel free to put a dot in there if you want, especially to break up double-letters.

  1. bob.brown@example.com
  2. amanda.jane.actor@example.com

By the way, did you know that with Gmail you can add dots anywhere (or take them away) and they will still go to the address? So that means that these will all be delivered to the same email address:

  • an.impossibly.long.email.address.at.gmail@gmail.com
  • animpossiblylongemailaddressatgmail@gmail.com
  • a.n.i.m.p.o.s.s.i.b.l.y.l.o.n.g.e.m.a.i.l.a.d.d.r.e.s.s.a.t.g.m.a.i.l@gmail.com

So if you already have a Gmail address which is very long, think about breaking it up a little to make it easier to read and write.

Free email providers – the good and the bad

Some free email providers are better than others.

The best is arguably Gmail which works very well straight out of the box. Your emails will get delivered to other people and the spam filters it has will ensure that all the rubbish sent to you is cleaned out without you losing any important emails.

Another recommendation is European based ProtonMail if you prefer a smaller, less corporate alternative to Google although some email may end up in spam.

As for the rest… well they vary a lot from good to very bad.

Some of them are regularly used by spammers. For example, mail.ru is often seen as being used by spammers and whilst this isn’t strictly true, some organisations have permanent blocks on receiving mail from them.

Likewise some providers have over-aggressive spam filters which block many legitimate emails from coming through. We would thoroughly recommend making sure your spam filters are not blocking legitimate emails from coming through. We have had issues with genuine, non-spam emails getting lost simply because the actor has been using a poorly set up free email provider.

And if I change my email address?

If you do decide to change your email address:

  1. In your profile & CV and everywhere else online you can think of, change to the new address.
  2. Keep the old address as long as possible – preferably forever!
  3. If you can, set up your old address so that it automatically forwards emails to your new address (this is usually quite simple to do)
  4. If you can’t forward your old emails, check into the old address once every few days to see if there’s anything important there

Some providers also allow you to transfer all your old emails across to your new account. Gmail is pretty good at this.

And finally…

No matter what email provider you use, ALWAYS CHECK YOUR SPAM FOLDER AT LEAST ONCE PER WEEK.

We cannot stress this enough. We know of at least 2 actors who have lost jobs because an email from the CD ended up in their spam folder and they could not be contacted.

Make a recurring task on your calendar: check your spam folder every Monday morning!

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