How to contact a Talent Agent or Casting Director

If you’re an actor looking for work you might be tempted to get in touch with a Talent Agent or Casting Director to increase your chances.

But there is definitely a right way to do this and a wrong way. And if you do it wrong, you will not only lose work now, you’ll also stand a good chance of losing work in the future.

Here, then, is the definitive guide to when and how you should contact Talent Agents and Casting Directors for work.

How to contact Casting Directors

A Casting Director (CD, and sometimes known as a Casting Agent) is the person responsible for finding the right actors for a project. When it comes to contacting them, the best advice is:don’t contact them.

Because one way to guarantee to annoy a casting agent is calling them out of the blue, telling them you’re an actor, and asking for work. Please, never, ever, do this. It is very bad practice and will get you nowhere.

exceptions

Ok, there are rare exceptions, but even then only contact them if you are 100% sure about what you are doing.

Usually the only time you are allowed to contact a CD is if you see a casting, which you are an exact fit for, and where the CD has put their contact details down. But again, don’t contact them if you are not a fit for one of the characters, you’ll just annoy them.

Here’s another scenario: suppose you are on IMDb Pro and see a film in pre-production in your area and there on the page is the name & contact email of the CD. In this case then you could write a general, brief, email to them with your information. But don’t expect a reply.

email not phone

And note that if you have to contact a CD, you should never telephone them to ask for work. Ever! No, always make it an email.

How to contact Talent Agents

Talent Agents represent actors and get them work.

And fortunately, contacting Talent Agents is a little easier than contacting CDs. But you do need to be a little bit careful with how you do this if you are serious about getting an agent.

Here’s an article which explains exactly how to find a Talent Agent and another telling you what kind of email to send them.

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