If you want to be taken seriously as an actor, you need an actor resume. This is a one-page guide to you: your previous roles, your skills, and your training. You’ll hand this resume to casting directors and potential agents.

How does a truly professional resume look? You can copy our template from Google Docs, and then we’ll walk you through filling it out in the rest of this article.

The most important thing to remember is that a resume is a quick snapshot introduction to YOU. With a glance, your resume should communicate whatever you feel is most important about you as a performer.

Whatever you most want a potential director to know, make sure it’s there and easy to find!

Downloadable Actor Resume Template

Personal Information Header

The header of your actor resume should have your general contact info, like address, phone number, and email, but it also needs some other more personal details.

Note: If you are represented by an agency, include the name of the agency, their phone number, and their email instead of your own. Anyone interested in booking you should go through them.

In addition to contact info, make sure you include the following:

• Height

• Weight/Body, in pounds or general body type, like Petite, Athletic, or Curvy

• Hair color and length

• Eye color

As weird as it may be to write out your stats like that, acting is a visual medium, and casting directors will want to know.

Headshot: If you have a professional headshot, include it. If you don’t, don’t put anything. You might be really good at taking selfies, but a poor headshot can kill an audition.

Credits

The bulkiest section of your resume is the Credits section. This is where you put all of your previous work, or whatever relevant experience you can fit on one page, if you have too many credits to keep in one place!

For each credit, you should generally share three things, placed in three even and easily scanned columns:

• The production title

• Your role

• The company and director

You can see our examples of these on the template.

Choosing categories

If you don’t have many credits, or all of your credits are in one area of performance, you can simply use CREDITS as the title for this section and leave it at that.

However, most people will divide up their experience into broad categories, like FILM and TELEVISION, as you can see in the template.

We’ve included a few of the most standard categories on the template, but here are some others you could choose to highlight:

• Stand-in Experience

• Extra Experience

• Improvisation

• Sketch Comedy

• Web Series

• Musical Performance

• Dance

As you can see, you can alter the heading to match your career experience and goals, but try not to get too fancy with this. Remember, simple is best!

Choosing credits

How do you choose what to include? Again, it’s all about what kind of roles you’re looking to getting in the future.

If you have the room, include everything you’ve done. If you don’t have room for that, include the things that are most similar to the roles you are looking for now.

If you’re still not sure what to include, pick whatever is most recent. If you got those roles in the past, they’re a good marker of what you could get in the future.

Education and Training

List any acting or performance trainings you have taken. You can include the following:

• Comedy or dramatic acting classes

• Dance workshops

• Vocal training

• Formal education (college, acting schools)

• Summer Programs and Intensives

• Conferences

Start with the most recent and work your way backwards.

If something else seems relevant to the kinds of roles you’re pursuing, include it!

If you’re running out of room on the resume, remove the less relevant or less impressive items.

Special Skills

This section can be a lot of things. It’s hard to tell what special skills a director or casting director might be looking for. We’ve provided a few examples on the template itself, but here are a few more ideas:

• Fitness or sports skills

• Martial arts

• Juggling, puppetry, mime, any kind of performance other than general acting

• Specific acting styles like Shakespeare, Method, or others you’ve been trained in

• Certifications like SCUBA, EMT, or anything else interesting.

• Random skills you’re good at and enjoy! Things like…

  • Palm reading

  • Animal handling

  • Racecar driving

You can get creative in this section, but try not to make it too long. Include the most common, like languages and musical talents, and a few very special skills to help you stand out.

WARNING: Only include things here if you are ready to do them! Don’t promise that you can juggle and then literally drop the ball.

Is a driver’s license really “special”?

It might seem strange, but if you have a driver’s license and passport, include it. Productions may need you to drive or go to another country, and they’ll want to know you can do that without any legal problems.

Resume Tips

Consider what’s relevant to your goals. What kind of parts are you trying to get? Keep that in mind as you consider what to include and how to word it on your resume.

For example: Want to play funny moms in films? Include previous credits in that age and genre, any comedy training, and special skills like Good with children and Improvisation.

Keep it to one page. No one will read beyond that. You might even get thrown in the trash for being too long.

Use a basic font. Sans serif is preferable, because it’s easier to read. This means something like Calibri or Ariel, that has simple letters, and not something like Times New Roman, which has fancy lil’ things on the end.

When in doubt, keep it simple. If you’re not a talented visual designer, don’t add a bunch of lines and colors. It’s best to present the info in the cleanest, least distracting way possible. Black and white is fine!

You can make more than one kind of resume. If you like performing in television dramas and stage musicals, you can make one resume for dramatic acting on screen, and one for vocal performance and stage acting.

That way, you know you’re only sharing the most relevant information with a casting director. Just don’t bring both to your audition or bring the wrong one on accident!

Always bring a hard copy. Whether it’s an audition, a meeting, or a class, have a resume on you. Don’t give it to someone if they don’t ask (you’ll annoy people), but have it ready!

What to do next

Now that you have an actor’s resume ready, make sure you have hard copies printed and ready.

You can also use the information you put together here to build an actor’s website. This is where you can go a bit more into detail on who you are, your personal brand, the kind of roles you’re looking for, and anything you left off the resume.

The website can wait, however, because the first thing you should do once you have your actor resume ready is…

Find an Audition!

Even if you’re ready to jump into the world of acting, you might not know where to leap first.

Our “How to Nail Your First Audition” guide will take you through all of the steps, including:

• How to book auditions…

• How to choose and practice a monologue…

• What to do on the big day…

• …and more!

Don’t spend ten years of trial and error on what you could learn in ten minutes.

Get your Audition Guide now!