Your photo is an essential marketing tool. But how do you make sure it shows your best side?

1. Make sure it looks like you. It sounds obvious but it’s the most important point. You don’t want to walk into an audition and surprise people. If your appearance changes, change your picture.
2. Get a mix of shots. Some smiley, some serious, some that show your teeth and some that don’t etc. Try to relax during the photo shoot so that the images feel more human.
3. Ask a friend. Ask your friends to pick their favourite shots. Make a note of their opinions but don’t tell them which images you like until they’ve shared their comments. Remember, you’re not the one who’s going to be looking at these pictures.
4. Get feedback.Ask them what they liked about your pictures. How do they make you appear?
5. Ask your agent. Your agent is the one who will be sending the pictures out and they will have an image of who you are in their heads. They need pictures that correlate to what they are selling, so their advice is essential.
6. Have a trial run. Get a friend to take some indoor and outdoor shots to help you decide what suits you best. The same with makeup and hair.
7. Prepare like a model. Before the shoot eat well and drink gallons of water and get a good night’s sleep the night before. If you wake up with a huge spot on your chin, reschedule.
8. Go for different looks. Have different looks corporate, young, sexy etc. With an Upstage website you can have unlimited headshots in your portfolio, so go crazy.
9. Follow your instincts.The photo that jumps out at the most people is a good guide. Remember – we are all a bad judge of our own appearance. You need to pick a picture you can live with for a year or two.

You are the boss of your own career but a good agent can help. They can find you more work, introduce you to their contacts, make you seem more credible, give you career advice and negotiate better deals. But don’t expect them to do everything for you – they’re agents not PAs, publicists or managers. How do you get a good agent?

1. Make yourself valuable. Agents are business and actors are their stock-in-trade. On the most basic level you have to look like somebody they can sell. They need a diverse range of ‘products’ to offer directors and casting agents. There are several ways to bid for a place in their roster: obvious talent, a track record of paid work, being unusual in some way.
2. Be committed. Actors that work regularly and show commitment to developing their skills are more likely to be taken on than someone who looks ambivalent about an acting career or uncommitted in some other way. Because they are paid on commission, if you can’t or don’t work, they don’t get paid. Show commitment by completing a course at a recognised drama school, developing your skills after you leave and performing regularly (even in unpaid or profit share projects).
3. Develop your skills. You can do courses at the Actor’s Centre, join companies, find auditions yourself, work with voice and acting coaches, produce your own shows etc.
4. Get a good reputation. A stack of good reviews is a very credible way to prove your talent to an agent. Introductions from other actors or, even better, a director who knows you carry more weight than an unsolicited letter or email.
5. Good PR. You should have a CV, a good photograph and (yes!) a professional website ready before you approach agents.
6. Do your research. Check Contacts and online to find agencies. Review their websites. Ask other actors about their agents. The more you know about an agency and what they do, the better you can target your initial approach and, if you get one, your first interview. It almost goes without saying, but you should never have to pay upfront to join an agency. Reputable agents take a commission when they get you work.
7. Ask your friends and colleagues. An introduction or referral is much better than a cold call.
8. Be seen. Most of the actors with agents that I meet got their agent in one of three ways: a) either at the end of a course at a drama school when agents came to the final year show or b) by being in a good fringe show when an agent came to see it. In one case, an actor actually commissioned the script and production as a showcase for her talent. You won’t find an agent sitting on your sofa.
9. Make contact. Write a great email or cover letter – short, memorable without being weird and time-specific – to your target agents. By time-specific I mean that you should have a reason to be contacting them now. For example, you’ll be appearing in a play in two weeks and you’d love them to see your work with a view to representation. Enclose a CV and photo (or your website URL). Don’t gush, beg or waffle. Ask a friend to read it before you send it and give you honest feedback.
10. Don’t give up. It can take time to find an agent. It’s better to wait and find a good agent. And don’t forget that even when you have one, you will still need to be the driving force behind your career and you will need to keep working on your skills and on raising your profile. Getting an agent is a step in the journey, not the destination.

Voiceovers can be a lucrative and steady form of work for actors. It isn’t just the obvious things like adverts and radio drama. You can do talking books, Open University content, website audio and 101 other things. So how do you get started?

1. Develop your voice. Do vocal warm-ups every day. Practice accents and sight-reading. Read stories to your friends, use a tape recorder to listen to how your voice sounds, change your answer phone message every day. If necessary, get some training from a voice coach or drama school.
2. Know yourself. Think about the type of voice you have and what it might be good for. Build on your strengths. Do you have an accent? Good, so does Sean Connery. Do you have a gravelly voice? Great – what would Tom Waits read? You get the idea. Choose material that shows off your natural skills and talent.
3. Get a voiceover demo. Using the material you have chosen and practiced thoroughly, make a voiceover demo. It should include a couple of advert-like pieces and a couple of narrative pieces, perhaps one fictional and one non-fictional. Keep it short – one or two minutes at most. If you get an MP3 file, make sure you include your name in the filename. Label CDs. You can search Google or consult Contacts to find a good, reputable recording studio who can help you create a good demo tape.
4. Get a website. If you put your voiceover demo on your website you can just email potential customers and agents a link to the page. It’s more efficient for everyone and you get to explain what’s on the demo and what your vocal strengths are. (Except for our Basic site, all Upstage sites include the option of a voiceover page. You can even send us a CD and we’ll digitise it for you.)
5. Get an agent. There are plenty of agencies who specialise in placing voice over artists. You can find a list here at Vocalist or check Contacts. Recommendations from friends and colleagues who already have an agent can be very helpful too. Send them a CD and a cover letter or write a letter or email with a link to your voiceover demo on your website.
6. Be patient. It takes time to build up a reputation but if you are good and professional, you will build up a portfolio of regular clients. Just don’t expect it to happen overnight.

Upstage partner, Raoul Brand, will help you create a great voiceover demo for a great price. Find out more.

You may already have an agent, great photos and a listing in Spotlight. They are necessary if you want to get good work. They help casting agents and directors find you and decide whether they want to audition you.

The internet can do the same thing and it is increasingly important for actors to raise their profile online and to manage how they appear to internet users.

These tips will help you get ahead online:

1. Get a website. Well we would say that, wouldn’t we? But seriously, almost everything you do online is anchored by your website. It is your public face online. Although directors can access your Spotlight CV online with an access pin, Google doesn’t index it so it doesn’t come up if someone just searches for your name. You need Spotlight but you also need a website. Seriously, even if you don’t get it from us, get a website. (But do get it from us.)
2. Get your own domain name. A domain name is like your internet telephone number. For example, Microsoft.com or Apple.com are domain names. You’ll want this for your website but it also looks much more professional if your email address uses your own domain name (bill.gates@microsoft.com sounds more professional than billg37@live.com, doesn’t it?). Also, this means that when people get your emails, they can use your email address to figure out your website address.
3. Use your website address everywhere. Put it on your business card, your photos, your CV, in the footer of your emails etc. People can’t visit a site they don’t know about.
4. Search engine optimisation. This technical term describes the process of ensuring that when someone types your name into Google, your name and website come up top. There are two parts to this. First, you need a site that is search-engine friendly. For example, it needs to include XML sitemaps, meta tags, properly-formatted code, support for social bookmarking and traffic analysis. Don’t worry if this is all techno-babble. We do all that stuff for you (and more). Second, you need to encourage as many people as possible to link to your site. For example, ask journalists to include a link in their articles, add it to your programme bio and ask your agent to link to it from their site.
5. Get a blog. Stephen Fry has one of the most popular blogs in the UK. It’s a great way to reach out to friends, family, fans, agents and anyone else who might be interested. Writing regular updates and giving a personal insight into your world is a great way to share your point of view and build up a following. (Our websites have the option of a blog or news update service.)
6. Use social networking sites. You should be on Facebook, which is more social but can be a great way to stay in touch with friends in the industry, and LinkedIn which is more of a professional version of Facebook. Depending on your audience, you may also want to be on Bebo and MySpace, which attract younger visitors. Set up a Google profile too.
7. Use Twitter. Twitter is a cross between text messaging and blogging. It lets you share short messages (or ‘tweets’) with people who have decided to ‘follow’ you. One actor, Ashton Kutcher, has already got a million people following his every move via Twitter and he appeared on Oprah as a result. You can’t buy that kind of publicity.
8. Share videos. Register on YouTube and you can share videos, showreels and clips online. Uploading videos is pretty easy. We like Vimeo and it attracts more of an arty crowd. It’s a great place to share a short film or showreel. (If you have a showreel on DVD we can digitise it so you can upload it to Vimeo or YouTube. There’s no charge for this – it’s all part of the service.)
9. Keep what’s private, private. Be careful about sharing too much information. For example, use privacy settings on Facebook and other sites to control the personal information that you share with the public. For example, you may not want to give your home address or phone number with an obsessive fan. Also, be careful about registering a domain name. By default, you can end up sharing your name, address and phone number during the sign up process. (Don’t worry, with Upstage, we register the domain and use our contact details so yours stay confidential.) For more tips about online safety, check out GetSafeOnline.org.
10. Don’t delay. Once someone registers a domain name with your name, or uses your name on Twitter, FaceBook etc. you can’t get it back. The first time your name appears in a movie credit, for example, you can be sure that a cybersquatter will grab your domain in the hope of selling it on for a profit later.