How to Start a Career in Commercial Acting

The first acting class I ever took was with a local casting director, and she called me up in front of the room to explain why my picture was the worst headshot she had seen in twenty years of casting. It was a cropped photo from a party. There were beer bottles in the background. I had printed it at home, on the cheap paper. (Forehead slap.)

Three years later that same casting director booked me on two major local projects. The headshot got better, sure. What booked me was that I kept walking back in, and she watched me get better.

That’s the whole answer to the question you typed into Google. The rest of this page is the long version.

How do you start a career in commercial acting?

You train on camera. You get a headshot that looks like you on a Tuesday. You put your profile on the casting sites your local casting directors actually use, and you audition for everything you can reach. Then you keep training, because the audition you book is the one you were ready for. There are no shortcuts.

My wife didn’t think she had the look

When I met Leeann she told me she didn’t have the “look” to be a commercial actress. She was a theater actress. Theater was familiar, and familiar felt safe, so she had talked herself into a ceiling.

She was lying to herself. She went on to book national commercials, including a Super Bowl spot, and she did it while living in Arizona. I’m bragging about my wife and I know it. But she is the proof: you don’t need to move, and you don’t need a different face. You need to go to work on the one you have.

What does a commercial actually pay?

Here’s the part nobody puts on the poster. Under the current SAG-AFTRA commercials contract, an on-camera principal earns a session fee of $783.10 for the day, and then the spot keeps paying in residuals for as long as it runs. Some commercials pay thousands of dollars for one day on set. Down at the other end, a non-union commercial we cast in Phoenix in 2015 paid $450 for the day plus the agent’s ten percent. That was a real notice, and it’s a real Tuesday for a working actor in a market like ours.

So is commercial acting a living? For some people. Is it a shortcut to one? No. It is the most consistent paid work in a small market, and it goes to the actors who were ready when the notice went out.

Four moves, in order

1. Train on camera, and keep training

Commercial acting is its own skill. Thirty seconds, a product, and a real person reacting to it. A theater actor plays to the back row. A commercial actor plays to a lens eighteen inches from her face. You learn the difference by doing it on camera, in front of a coach who tells you the truth, week after week. If you’re going to work in this industry you are going to have to work for it, and a class you take consistently is the one thing on this list that changes everything else on it.

2. Get a headshot that looks like you on a Tuesday

Not the best you have ever looked. The way you look walking into a callback. Casting directors book the person who walks in the door, and a headshot that over-promises costs you the room the second you open it. Hire a photographer who knows the difference between a beautiful picture and an actor headshot. A good picture is fine. The point of the headshot is to sell the actor.

3. Get on the sites your casting directors use

The big commercial castings in Arizona run through a casting director, and the casting directors here post their notices on Casting Networks. Actors Access is the other profile worth keeping current. Have a strategy before you enroll in either one. They cost time and money before they return anything, and they will not make you rich and famous. They put the notice in front of you. What you do with it is on you. The current list of audition websites is on the book page, with what each one is for.

4. Audition locally, for everything

Student films. Industrials. The short somebody’s nephew is shooting this weekend for no money. You are going to screw up, and that’s how you learn. The mistake is the education. If you wait until you feel ready you will never go, and an imperfect first impression beats no impression. Get better and come back. You’ll be noticed for your progress, not remembered by your last failure.

Study the ones who made it

Stephanie Courtney is Flo from the Progressive commercials. She didn’t book Flo because of her look. She was a stand-up comic who trained, competed and lost for years before that spot. Business Insider told her story. Count the years. Then go find twenty commercials you love and work out what the actor did that got them the job. Not the product. The actor.

Two free lessons on commercial work

There are no shortcuts

I promise that in the book and I’ll repeat it here. The headshot won’t do it. The website won’t do it. The look, whatever you have decided that is, won’t do it. What took Leeann from a theater stage to a Super Bowl commercial is the same thing that took me from the worst headshot in twenty years to a booking with the woman who said so. Consistent training, and the nerve to keep walking back in.