How To Write An Acting Resume – Format & Design

An actor’s resume is a bit of trick: it has to fit you into the webwork of the available roles and the social landscape of your local professional environment. Here you will learn about the different aspects of putting it all together and understanding what your acting resume format says about you, and what influence it can have on your career both in the short-term and the long-term.

Think About Your Acting Career As A Whole

The first thing I can tell you to do is to go and check out this example actors resume. It is simple, it is to the point, and it has a number of different sections that you will want to consider based on their appropriateness for your own acting endeavor. As I have said in my article on resumes for actresses, there is no way that anyone can tell you exactly what you should do because things are so different depending on your geographical locations, your acting contacts, your personality, and your artistic goals and temperament.

Acting Jobs Are Production Art

Make no mistake, this is an artform you’ve gotten yourself into and you will be dealing with a whol lot of wild artistic personalities. Your job is to recognize this environment, understand its needs, and thrive in it. One of the things that I never understand about actors in the inflexibility of their resumes. Why on earth would you think that your actor’s resume should be a solid thing that only changes when you get cast in another show is absolutely beyond me.

You Are Not Your Acting Career

Every other type of professional takes it for granted that their resume should be more a reflection of the job they want than of the jobs they’ve had, but artists like to believe that they are their past work. Banish this thought from your mind. You are not the work you have done, you are the work you will do. I need for you to go and read my article on acting careers in general in order to really grasp what I am saying here and why I am saying it.

Careers In Acting Demand Flexibility

All that I can say here is to really reiterate that you should be changing your acting resume for every single audition, and it should reflect the acting work that you want to be doing and that you know you are capable of. All that your resume is there for is to convince somebody else that you should be able to do what you want to do. It’s not there for you, you already know you are an actor and what that means to you. Again, take a look at the sample acting resume, think about the sections that you see there and what you will want in terms of sections for an acting resume that contains your work but reflects your future, and make it happen. Acting jobs only rarely come to lazy people, and they usually have to be related to someone. Auditioners sorting through stacks of resumes for actors won’t know you went to the extra trouble; they won’t have to.

Another consideration when you’re putting together your resume is that it is often intended to land in the lap of the middle-man of your industry, which are the acting agencies. Do not sell these agencies short, because their whole job is to build the connections that you will never have the time to build put them to good use.