Acting and Modeling Agents
Actors may be interested in working theatrically (stage, film or television) as well as in commercials. Some agents will handle all types of acting work while others may specialize in a particular area. There are agents who represent television, voice-overs, or just film and television. Typically, the larger the agency, the more specialized the agents.
An agent has two sets of clients: the "talent" (actors, models, voice-over artists, etc.) and the "buyer". The buyer can be a casting director, advertising agency, production company, photographer, or direct client if the client has an "in-house" production staff. Agents promote talent to the buyers, submitting talent that have the appropriate age, race, sex, look, talent, etc. that the buyer is seeking for his/her project. Usually, an agent submits the actor's head shot or the model's composite card or portfolio to the buyer. After the buyer has made choices, the agent then arranges an audition (or for models, a "go-see" or open call). After the buyer has met the talent, the buyer will contact the agent if any of the talent will be hired. The agent will coordinate the details of wardrobe, directions, etc., as well as negotiate the contract or pay.
Note that the agent's job is to get the talent auditions; the talent is the only one who can get the job. For their work, agents take a 10 to 20% commission of the gross, depending on whether the job is union (such as SAG-AFTRA) or not. Union jobs are paid per negotiated guidelines, but sometimes in non-union jobs the pay is delayed.
A well established agent will have networks upon networks of contacts. Also, agents have access to professional casting services. Many of these casting resources are not available to the general public.
Although most of the successful agents are private individuals unknown to the public, some are celebrities in their own right. Notable current and former talent agents include David Begelman, Ari Emanuel, Freddie Fields, Johnny Hyde, Irving "Swifty" Lazar, Sue Mengers, Quincy Sims, Lew Wasserman, and Jadin Wong.
Read more about this topic: Talent Agent
Famous quotes containing the words acting, modeling and/or agents:
“Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that has “cast up” in my time or is like to—this art by which even the “poor” can possess themselves of tolerable likenesses of their absent dear ones. And mustn’t it be acting favourably on the morality of the country?”
—Jane Welsh Carlyle (1801–1866)
“The computer takes up where psychoanalysis left off. It takes the ideas of a decentered self and makes it more concrete by modeling mind as a multiprocessing machine.”
—Sherry Turkle (b. 1948)
“Luckless is the country in which the symbols of procreation are the objects of shame, while the agents of destruction are honored! And yet you call that member your pudendum, or shameful part, as if there were anything more glorious than creating life, or anything more atrocious than taking it away.”
—Savinien Cyrano De Bergerac (1619–1655)