Acting Resume: Sections to Include
Writing a great resume for an acting career is very much unlike writing any other kind of resume. When you put together a resume for business or for some manner of dayjob you must list out each job you have had and write a pithy description of each one and all the reasons why you [...]
Writing a great resume for an acting career is very much unlike writing any other kind of resume. When you put together a resume for business or for some manner of dayjob you must list out each job you have had and write a pithy description of each one and all the reasons why you were so great at it. You’ll also expect to write a summary of yourself and your own goals and aspirations.
Sections Acting Career Information
With a resume for an actor or an actress this is absolutely not the case. You will not do any kind of descriptive writing at all for this type of resume, but must instead let your experience speak for itself. Of course, there are certainly ways that you can craft that information to more adequately position you for the specific types of parts that you will be auditioning for. You can learn more about how to do that in these articles:
Acting Career Essential: The Acting Resume
In this article, we will be going over something much more basic and completely important. If you skipped out on every other article but this one, you’d do relatively okay in terms of understanding how to write an acting resume for yourself, whether you have very little experience of a lot of experience. In fact, if you already have a lot of experience you already know everything in this article, so you can just skip this one and go read the more conceptual information in the ones linked to above. But if you are a beginning actor who is just starting out and has very little experience, you need to know the basic of how to compile your actor’s resume and headshot because without these basic things you will never gain the experience you need because you won’t be able to get any parts.
As I mentioned, you will not do any kind of descriptive writing on your resume for acting. You will just be listing your experience, and you should not do anything except for that. An acting resume must be exactly one side of page. This is very important. And it should be laid out neatly and uncluttered, in a readable font and font size. Don’t use a small font size on for your actor’s resume; if you feel like you need to decrease the size to fit everything onto the page then what you actually need to do is to remove some of the experience you are listing. There is no need to be highly comprehensive on your acting resume; simply include the most impressive and most relevant theatre, film, and television acting experience that you have.
Acting Headshots Are Another Acting Career Essential
The reason that your resume must be exactly one side of one page is because you are going to staple it to the back of your head shot. This single-paged headshot/resume is all you will send to casting directors in hopes of securing an audition. Resist the urge to include additional photos or materials, and resist the urge to include mission statements or anything like this on your acting resume. And whatever you do, do not list your regular day job work experience on this resume. No casting director in the world cares that you have waited tables, or that you were employee of the month at the gap.
The Meat Of The Acting Resume
So what actually does go on an acting resume then? The first thing that should appear write at the top in large, crisp, clean lettering is your name. And then in smaller lettering should be your contact information as well as your height, weight, hair color, and eye color. This is basic stuff and you can see and example by clicking here: example acting resume.
Acting Career Experience and Skills
After this basic info you’ll have a series of sections that detail your acting experience and relevant skills. These should be laid out very cleanly into nice tables (without lines) and they should be in a font that is easy to read. Again, if the page looks cluttered and hard to read or the font is too small, a casting director will be less inclined to read it, particularly if they have several hundred more professional-looking acting resumes waiting to be sorted through. So if you are auditioning for roles in theatre, you will make a section called “Theatrical Experience.” Depending on your specialties you might even want to consider splitting up Musical Theatre Experience from Straight Theatre Experience, although some folks argue against that. If you don’t have any experience yet, then you should go out and get some. Educational institutions are great places to build up some experience, as are community theatres, non-profit theatres, and store-front theatres.
The next thing that you will want to include is the next most important set of experience that you have. This is all very highly individualized, so it will depend on the type of professional acting experience that you have already accrued as well as the types of roles you want to audition for an the ultimate direction that you hope to steer your career in. So you might end up having a section for television acting experience, film acting experience, voice-over work, etc. In most cases you won’t bother including modeling resume experience. Of course, like anything else, this has to be based on your own personal career goals and also the relevancy of the experience you have to the parts you want to get. If you are trying out for a role playing a model or a playboy bunny or chip-n-dale dancer or something like this, go ahead and include you modeling experience. Just play it smart.
The last section you will include in your acting resume is a section for any relevant special skills you have, such as stage combat or dialects that you are able to speak in. Any special skill or technique that identifies you and that might give you an inroad to particular types of parts, include here. And that’s it, your professional acting resume is ready to hit the presses and be stapled onto the back of your headshot and sent off to open theatre auditions and film and television casting calls for actors and actresses in your area. Good luck!
The next step in learning about the acting resume format that you will be using.