How to Build a Strong Acting Resume With Zero Experience

Hey, I'm Aaron Marcus, and I'm going to be teaching you how to create a beginning actor's resume. You're going to learn not only some secrets and tips about creating a resume that will be desired by agents, casting directors, and directors— and by the way, this would be really helpful even for experienced actors. There are certain things that you definitely want to add in there, things you never want to put in an acting resume, and I'm going to walk you through the entire process. You will actually be learning some of the specific things to do towards the end of the video, but I'm also going to be sharing with you some information that was incredibly difficult for me until I learned this trick, and I'm going to share it with you. And by the way, if you haven't subscribed to my channel yet, make sure you click the subscription button and the little bell, the notification button. And that way, every time I upload a new video, you will be notified. And after you've watched the video, if you like it, please give it a thumbs up. That helps spread the word so that other people can learn from this video as well. Okay, so let's get started. The very first thing is let me explain to you what a resume is all about, and this might surprise you. An acting resume is basically an opportunity for industry professionals to know who you are, what your experiences have been, what your skills are, and the kind of education that you have had. But something that you absolutely need to know Up front is that your resume does not get you a job. Your resume does not get you a contract with an agent. Now, it's true, you know, if you've gotten a, you know, a master's degree from, you know, Yale Drama School, yeah, that will open up some doors. It will give you instant credibility, but that doesn't book the job for you. So the— that, that's like the key thing to, to remember at the very beginning. So when you are first starting, and this is what people ask me all the time, I haven't done anything, how could I possibly put together an acting resume with no experience? Well, I'm going to teach you how. Let's do it. So first thing that you can do is make sure people know how to get in touch with you. You've got a name. I'm assuming you do. So if you do, put it in the top, in the middle, and I'm going to show you a sample of my resume in a little bit so you can get a sense of the format. But have your name in larger letters, so in the center of the resume, and that way you stand out. You also want to make sure that people know how to get a hold of you. So you can have a phone number, you can have an email address that you can place under your photo and— I'm sorry, under your name. But also don't forget, really think about your email address. How do you want to represent yourself to the acting world? Now you could have multiple email addresses, maybe one just for fun, you know, for your friends, your contacts, But if it's something for the industry, don't use an old email address that doesn't connect people with you. Like, you know, ilovedogs@gmail.com. You know, you want to use something much more professional. And if you can use your name, that would be great. Mine is aaron@aaronrobertmarcus.com. There are a lot of Aaron Marcus's out there, so I couldn't just do aaron@aaronmarcus.com. So if you can try to do something that, you know, will allow people to very quickly identify you and not something that sounds, you know, just more playful or something that you've used in the past. For your phone number, you know, make sure it's a number where people can reach you. If you have any concerns about people getting your, you know, private cell number, you can always try using Google Voice, and when people call it, you can have that, that, that number transferred to your cell phone so that way you're not giving out your personal number. It's really pretty cool and it's free. Um, the other thing too is if you happen to have a website with acting or modeling information there, sure, you can include that, but Otherwise, I wouldn't. For social media, just be really careful with that. You don't want to send people to an Instagram or Facebook page where you're just doing life things. You want to make it work-related. You just want to be taken seriously. So if you don't have a social media channel that is directly connected with your work, Then I wouldn't put that in there. Okay, so you're just getting started. You've got contact information. You need to let people know about your statistics, your height, your weight, eye color, and hair color. And by the way, there is no one way to format your resume. A lot of people do it many different ways. The key thing to remember is it has to be one page. You can't have more than one page for a resume. So what I like to do is I like to have 3 columns for my information, which you can see here. And what I also do is for the statistics, I put that on the left-hand side. It just makes it nice and clean. Remember, People are going to be scanning this pretty quickly, and so you want to make it easy for people to read. I like to use either Arial or Times New Roman as my font type. I would never go smaller than 12-point. You can use 14, especially if you don't have that much information to put in there, but you just want to make it really easy for people to read. Now, here's a trick. And this is something I just didn't know about many years ago. And I started doing this and I found it really helpful. And I think it's a good idea. I like to have my headshot in the upper right-hand corner of my resume. And this way people can see what I look like as they're viewing my resume. So they're going to look at my headshot. And once again, this is assuming you're not just sending a resume online, but they're going to look at my— you know, it's an in-person audition, um, or I'm mailing it out, you know, as a marketing piece. So they'll look at my headshot, flip it over, and then when they flip it over, as they're scanning my resume, they can see my face again. And if you only have one headshot, then use it again. Uh, if you have a very different look, if you use extensions, or if you have you know, a beard or you're clean-shaven, you know, and you might look very different either way, then you can include that in the upper right-hand corner, and I'm going to show you a trick in a second that changed my life. Okay, so here is the simple way of adding your headshot to your resume, and before I learned this, I just struggled so much with doing it. So let's just say this is your resume. I realize I don't have any other information, but I want to add my headshot to the upper right-hand corner. So first, what you have to do is you go to Insert, you have to go to Pictures, and then you go Picture from File. And just to make this more interesting, it's not my headshot. I'm going to throw in a picture of a beautiful grizzly that I saw up in Alaska. Now it's way too big, so I just grab Shift, do a left mouse click, grab the corner, and this keeps everything proportional, but it's making the photo smaller, which is exactly what you're going to need to do. Okay, so let's say that's a pretty good size. Now if I grab it and I want to put it in the upper you know, upper right-hand corner, you can see what happens. It just messes everything up. So here's the trick. You do a right mouse click on the photo, you go to Wrap Text, and then in the dropdown you go to In Front of Text. That allows you to take the photo, put it anywhere you want, And it doesn't mess up your text. I mean, this is just a beautiful thing. Now, typically, whenever I'm creating my resume, I put it in Word. It makes it much simpler. Normally, I would have my name up a little bit higher, and I would move the photo up a little bit higher. But at least the important thing is I'm just showing you how you can actually maneuver a photo, a JPEG, into a Word document while keeping the text just as it is. I typically, if I'm going to be submitting my resume online, I will turn this into a PDF file simply by just going to Save As, go to File, Save As, and then in the dropdown over here, I'm going to go to PDF, and then I'm going to save it as a PDF, because when you are uploading things into a PDF, the format stays better. Sometimes Word things get a little wonky, so create your resume in a Word document but also have a copy in a PDF just in case you have to upload it. Anyhow, that's the trick for putting a headshot into a Word document. So I like to have 3 different columns, and I'm assuming— look, if you're just getting started, you're not going to have credits for TV shows, you're not going to have credits for films, and that's okay. People understand You have to start somewhere. I mean, the most famous actors in the world were not born with a wonderful resume. It takes time. It takes years to produce this. So if you don't have any theater, you don't have any TV, you don't have any film, you don't have any commercials— and by the way, with commercials, typically, and there are some exceptions to the rule, I never list TV commercials on my resume. What I do is I have a column, you know, that says TV commercial, and then in parentheses I have list available upon request. And the thing is, they normally don't need to know what commercials you have done. Now, sometimes, unless they are really worried about competition and they want to make sure that you don't have a TV spot running for a competitor right now? And they might ask you, do you currently have any conflicts running for this particular product? So let's, let's just say, for instance, this is an audition for Burger King. They might ask, well, do you have any other TV commercials running for a competitor, McDonald's or any other place? And then you have to let them know. So that's why I think it's always better just to put list available upon request. Next to TV commercials. So that way you don't take yourself out of the running for an audition or maybe a job if you did something for, you know, McDonald's 10 years ago and, you know, it hasn't run for 9 years. So that's not going to be a conflict. They just want to know, is it currently running? So I put list available upon request. And once again, right before I show you this little trick of how to place your headshot into your resume. The most important thing for people who are just getting started is your training and your special skills. Those are things that can grab the attention of agents, directors, and casting directors and can make the difference between whether you get brought in for an audition Or a meeting with an agent or just being passed over. It's really important for you to get training. Yeah, there are some exceptions to the rule. There are some people who are just natural actors. It's rare. It really is. It's— look, some people hit the lottery and win $20 million. Yeah, it does happen, but it's rare. Most of the well-known actors that you know of have studied for years. They have learned. Maybe they've gotten on-the-job training on sets. Some very, very famous actors continue to study. Sometimes before a role, they will meet with, you know, an acting coach. So, you know, don't just say, well, people tell me I'm a good actor. Look, it's a lot different than hanging out with your friends and, you know, acting something out than being on a set reading somebody else's lines and making them believable, you know, turning them into a real character. So without a doubt, start taking classes. But here is the problem that people run into on their resume. Sometimes they will put For their education, they will put acting class, and then maybe they'll put the name of the teacher and/or the name of the institution where they're studying. Just putting acting class is meaningless. If I'm a casting director, if I'm an agent looking at this, it's not telling me anything about you. What I want to see, what the casting director and the directors and the agents want to see, is What kind of training have you had? So was it an improv class? Was it acting for TV commercials class? Was it script analysis class? Acting for film? What kind of class was it? Make it specific and not make it generic, and that way people can see Okay, well, the person's just getting started. They don't have any experience, but, you know, they've taken some good classes. Maybe they even recognize the institution or the teachers, and that could make the difference between you being brought in for an audition or a meeting with an agent and nothing happening because they'll see it and they'll go, all right, just getting started, but I like who they've studied with. Let's give them a chance because they look right for the part. So that is something that's really, really important. The other thing too is your special skills, and sometimes you have to think a little bit outside the box. Here's the way you want to think about special skills. Is it something that a casting director might be needing for a scene in a TV show, Or film. So maybe, are you— do you have experience as a bartender? Well, that would be a really good special skill to list on your resume. What kind of sports can you, can you play? And, and once again, you don't have to be an NFL football player in order to list football down, but do you look like you know what you're doing? That's really it. If you get cast in a TV commercial and the person is playing basketball, do you look like you know how to play basketball? Once again, you don't have to be an NBA player. Maybe you do fencing. Well, that could be really interesting. And just make sure you are proficient at that. Do you play an instrument? And once again, don't list something if you took piano lessons in 3rd grade and now you're 40 years old. You know, something where you really know how to play. Do you speak a foreign language? Once again, do you sound like you are from that country? Maybe maybe you are a mountain climber. Maybe you can ride a bike. Maybe you can ride a unicycle. You know, don't don't put things like you know good with animals or can speak in front of large groups. Groups, uh, because maybe you've done pageant work. And, and by the way, speaking of pageant work and modeling and things like that, never ever, ever, ever, ever list any of that on your resume. This is an acting resume. They don't want to know about modeling. And in some ways it can actually hurt you because if you have information and you list, you know, modeling jobs that you've done They're probably going to view you as a model. And people still have this, what I think is a misconception— well, models, they can't act. So don't list anything unless it involves something with acting. So anyhow, maybe do you have a passport? That's something you can put in there. Maybe there's a project and they're shooting it in Turkey, and they're going to be shooting in 3 weeks, and they need to make sure that you can get out of the country with a valid passport. So that's something you can put in there. Do you drive a 5-speed? Can you drive a stick shift car? Do you ride a motorcycle? Do you have a motorcycle license? I mean, those are things that you can absolutely put in there, maybe even like dancing or horseback riding. And once again, don't just put horseback riding, make it specific. You know, do you ride Western? Do you do English? Do you Do dressage, whatever it is. And same with swimming. What kind of swimming? Now you can put general swimming, okay, but can you do backstroke, breaststroke? Are you a diver? Something that lets them know specifically what you can do. It also makes you sound like somebody who knows what they're doing. Martial arts, that's another kind of option to put in there. So anyhow, those are things that even if you are just getting started in the industry, these are things that you can put in your resume that can really help grab the attention of industry professionals. Now, sometimes people have asked me about, can I put extra work on my resume because that's all that I have? So my thoughts, and once again, everybody has different opinions about it. I'm just sharing with you My experiences and the many, many, many casting directors that I've spoken to about this topic, and I'm going to share this with you. So look, if you have any other credits, then I would not list extra work. If you've done some theater, and once again, you don't put a date on it. Now, if you did something in nursery school or in third, you know, I'm going back to 3rd grade. I don't know why 3rd grade, but anyhow, something that you did years and years and years and years ago as a child, no, I would not put that in there. But if something you did 3, 4, 5 years ago, 6 years ago, 7 years, did you do it? Were you on stage? Were you in the play? Add it to your resume. And if it was something for school or for a religious institution, you don't have to put the name. Just put the name of the play, the character, and the director. There's no reason to do that. Or the same thing holds true if you've done any student films. Don't put student film. Put the name of the project, the name of the director, and if there is a production company, you can do that. You can add that in there. So you've got the name, name of the film, your character, the name of the director who perhaps is a student. And by the way, doing student films is a wonderful way of adding to your resume, getting experience, and potentially beginning to create an acting reel. Now maybe the, the student film looks absolutely horrible and it's not going to be able to help you. Maybe it looks great. Maybe you just made an amazing connection with a student director, and who knows where the student director is going to go. You just did this project with this student, he or she really liked you, and now all of a sudden they're doing independent films. Well, why wouldn't they want to ask you to audition again? So doing student films can be a great way to build experience and also build your resume. Try auditioning for all local theater productions. Once again, it's a great way to add information to your resume. So anyhow, those are the key things to keep in mind if you are just beginning and you're trying to build a resume, because you need to have an, an acting resume when you are submitting yourself. People need to see a headshot and a resume. And, you know, once again, you absolutely want to put this together in the right format so that people know that you are professional, even if you're just getting started. Because like I said before, everybody starts somewhere. Hey, I'm curious if, if you have done anything to your resume when you first started that you found helpful, please leave a note at the bottom and share your information. Look, that's why I'm putting, you know, these videos together to try to help other people learn from my 34-plus years of experience in the industry. And so that, that's the whole point. I am continuing to build a large family of actors and, and some models as well. And we're here just to try to help each other. We're not competing with anybody. We're sharing information. So leave a comment below if you found this helpful. Don't forget, please like it, subscribe, click the notification button. And I'm giving you permission to share this on your social media page. Share it with your friends. Share it with other actors. Just so that they can learn from this as well. Very last thing, if you can, I always ask for a donation if that's something you can possibly do to help support this YouTube channel. You will find a PayPal link below, and if you can, that would be wonderful. Any amount, that would be great. And so, you know, I'd love to have you be a part of this channel. Anyhow, I'm Aaron Marcus. I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya.