You’ve Got Your Acting Headshots; Now What Do You Do with Them?
TJ McGibbon acting headshot photographed by Kevin Patrick Robbins.
If you’re new to acting and you’ve just gotten your first set of headshots done, you might not know what to do next. Where do you post them? How do you get them in front of casting directors? How many do you need to have?
Throughout my decades of experience in the entertainment industry — as a performer, teacher, director, and headshot photographer — things have changed dramatically. Luckily, they also tend to change slowly. Nowadays, almost everything is done online and you don’t need to be in a major metropolitan area to submit for roles. Auditioning is often done through self-taping at home and submissions are done via video upload on online casting websites.
Professional Casting Websites
Here in Canada, the two major professional casting websites, used by casting directors and breakdown services, are Actors Access and Casting Workbook.
Actors Access
PRICE: Free & $9.99/mo USD ($68/y USD)
In my opinion, this is the top priority for actors who are serious about film and TV roles. Actors Access is where the top union TV and film casting directors in Toronto post their casting breakdowns. There are also a lot of non-union projects, shorts, and ad campaigns listed here. What you won’t find are student films or a lot of projects that help you build credits and footage for a demo reel. For that, you’ll want to create a profile and subscribe to Mandy.
Casting Workbook
PRICE: Free & $12.99/mo USD ($99/y USD)
Your second priority as an actor in Canada is Casting Workbook. Casting Workbook is a Canadian company that has been supplying casting breakdown services for more than a decade.
Spotlight (UK)
PRICE: £172.50/y (Discounts for deaf and disabled performers)
Spotlight is the UK equivalent to Actors Access.
Showcast (Australia)
PRICE: $130/y AUD + Media Package / $52/y AUD (Basic), $78/y AUD (Plus), or $102/y AUD (Pro)
Showcast is the Australia equivalent to Actors Access. It costs a standard fee per year plus your choice of media package: basic, plus, or pro.
Independent Casting Websites
Mandy, Backstage & StarNow
MANDY.COM PRICE: $14.95/mo ($99/y CAD)
Mandy is a great resource for actors looking to build their resume. This is a go-to casting board for student films and independent projects that can provide you with credits for your resume and high-quality footage to include in your demo reel. Since Actors Access and Casting Workbook serve a more professional, established client base, Mandy grew out of the need to fill a void for low-budget and independent projects that couldn’t get or afford access to those systems. It is still widely used today and a great place to start if you are just starting out.
Mandy, Backstage and StarNow are all part of the same casting network. While you can use the same credentials to login to all three websites, they still all operate independently of one another, have completely separate castings and profiles, and serve different geographic target audiences. In Canada, Mandy is the website you would want to use, not Backstage or StarNow, unless you hold dual citizenship and can easily get to those countries.
BACKSTAGE PRICE: $14.99/mo CAD ($30/y CAD)
Backstage is similar to Mandy but its primary geographic region is the United States of America, with the majority of productions listed in New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami. I would not recommend this website for actors who are not based in the United States.
STARNOW PRICE: $12.99/mo CAD ($29.70/6 months CAD)
StarNow is similar to Mandy and Backstage but its primary geographic regions are Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, with the majority of productions listed in Sydney, Melbourne, Aukland, and London. I would not recommend this website for actors who are not based in these countries.
Entertainment Industry Databases
IMDb Pro
PRICE: $19.99/mo USD ($149.99/y USD)
Next to your Actors Access profile — or Mandy, if you’re just starting — this is the second place you should upload your headshots. In my opinion, having an IMDb Pro account is critical to your acting career and is often overlooked. You can manage your own profile and upload your own images. Your IMDb page is the first thing people check to see your credits and an IMDb profile without a single headshot implies that you don’t take acting seriously, even if you do.
In addition to managing your profile, you also have access to the MASSIVE contact database IMDb has on acting agents, managers, and more. When you’re looking for an agent, my primary piece of advice is to check IMDb Pro to find out which agencies represent whom and make a wish list of the agencies you wish to represent you.
Also, since IMDb is owned by Amazon, if you end up in a show or feature that finds its way to Amazon Prime Video or is an Amazon Original, then the primary on your IMDb profile is the image that will show up in Prime’s “X-Ray” feature that shows you who is in a scene and connects to their IMDb profile.
TMDB
PRICE: Free.
You are not going to use this database much, but the TMDB is where a lot — and I mean A LOT — of websites, such as Trakt and Letterboxd get their listing info from. If you have a credit that lands you in this database, then you can submit your headshot to be the image that shows up on your profile on many other websites.
