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A Beginners Guide to Becoming an Actor

Generally speaking, it’s easy to become an actor. Almost anyone can do it!

The difficulty is when someone wants to become a good actor and a professional actor.

There are a lot of pretend actors out there; but for those of you who want to do it properly, here’s a simple step-by-step guide for complete beginners.

Get experience

Nothing, absolutely nothing, is better than experience.

So first things first, you need to do some acting, however and wherever you can. This means you should take a local acting class or join a local am-dram society if you’re interested in theatre.

But if you’re into film acting more, you need to get into that and here are some ideas:

  1. Look for acting for the camera type courses in your area and take a couple
  2. Check the castings here and look for student films, non-paid jobs, etc who are happy to take untried talent (even if it’s just an extra role)
  3. Join a few local Facebook groups with castings in your area and go for those jobs which you’re suitable for (at the beginning that’s likely to be unpaid or background roles in student productions, etc)
  4. Apply to be an extra with a local casting agency just to get a bit of experience

But perhaps the best way when you’re first starting out is to make your own film! It’s not only fun but will give you a huge amount of learning experience and confidence. 

Then once you’ve got a little bit of experience, it’s time to up your game!

Prepare your material
You won’t be able to submit for a job or be taken seriously unless you have:
  1. Decent headshots
  2. An acting CV
  3. A showreel
Of course it’s that old Catch-22 situation: you can’t get an acting CV or showreel without experience; and you can’t get acting experience without a CV or showreel.
But there are ways around it.

Make a profile

Whatever your CV or headshots are like, you’ll need to have a full, complete profile on enCAST in order to apply to work here.
So make sure your profile is complete.

Find work

Then it’s a matter of finding more professional work.

By all means keep making films with your friends, but if you want to be known as a serious actor you need to stop doing free jobs and do paid jobs.

And that’s it!

The basics are the same for everyone. It really is that simple. Anyone can become an actor…

…but only a very few will become good actors.

And what do we mean by good?

  1. They treat acting as a job, not a hobby
  2. They are professional at all times
  3. They take acting seriously
  4. They never stop learning about acting – both performing and finding work

You cannot imagine the number of bad actors who apply for work with poor headshots and so on. Or bad actors who write nothing in their submission email.

There’s a big difference indeed between good actors and bad actors and it’s not always about how they perform in front of the camera!

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