Actors, Castings, and Roles, Race, Religion, Gender, Nationality, etc…

First off, absolutely anyone who is interested in acting and over 16 is welcome to join enCAST regardless of age, sex, ability, shape, size, race, colour, religious belief (or not) or anything else for that matter.

We do not discriminate in any shape or form and anyone who does is immediately removed from the site.

That being said, here are a couple of words on the castings and applications we have and how they relate to who you are.

Normally, under European law, jobs cannot be restricted to a certain age, nationality, gender, or ethnicity, etc.

However, exceptions can be made for jobs like acting where there is a specific legal or practical reason why the actor applying must be of a certain type.

For example, if you’re advertising for an office manager, you can’t say that they need to be “male, middle-aged, and White.” 

However, if you are making a film and you want the office manager to look a certain way, then you can ask for an actor who is “male, White, and looks between 45-55 years old.”

But let’s talk about the casting calls themselves and what they mean and what they can ask for.

What your personal religion is or isn’t is has no bearing at all on you submitting for a role or not.

So while a casting cannot ask for a Jewish or Atheist actor or anything like that, it can specify the role as a Catholic Priest or a Muslim girl, etc.

And any actor can apply no matter what religion they personally are or are not!

Likewise what your personal sexual orientation is, or how you identify, has no bearing at all on whether you can submit for a role or not.

Again, a casting cannot ask for a gay or trans or straight actor but instead the sexuality of a role can be specified, e.g. a gay teenager, a middle-aged lesbian, etc.

But remember, you can apply for a straight role if you’re gay and you can apply for a gay role if you’re straight.

Note that in enCAST to keep things simple all roles are classed as either male or female (or m/f). If a role is non binary (i.e. not simply male or female) then we call it m/f which really means it’s either/or/other.

When you make a profile on the site, you can put down any number of ethnicities which apply to you. The ones we have listed are very general and we’ll happily add variations or new ones if you feel the ones there already aren’t the right ones for you. We ask this so that we can filter castings to show you, but again, absolutely anyone can apply for a role regardless of their ethnic background, so whilst we encourage productions to cast colour-blind (aka nontraditional) you will find some roles here which specify an ethnicity saying the character is Black or Middle Eastern etc.

Under European law, there can be no discrimination of nationalities. That means a role might be specified as a Spanish person, but any nationality actor can apply.

Practically speaking though, if the role is for a German national then only someone who could pass for a German should apply. 

Note, there are some exceptions possible here if the film is being financed by a government or regional body which does so on the proviso that actors from that area will be used. 

Again, a job can specify the level you need for a language (e.g. Native or fluent speaker). But being native cannot be linked to being of that nationality. Native is used to mean you speak the language as if the average person would identify you as being brought up and perhaps having gone to school in a certain country.

But whether you have done or not is irrelevant.

Again, practically speaking, if a job asks for native Italian speakers, you should only apply if you can speak Italian and the average Italian person would think you come from Italy.

It’s important then to note the difference between the actor and the role.

The role can be specified as a certain gender, a certain religion, a certain age, a certain look, etc. but any actor is allowed to submit for it. For the sake of practicality we filter who can submit, but you are free to change your profile to suit the role.