How To Email Casting Directors (And Get More Auditions)

Most actors never email casting directors. Not because they shouldn't, because they're scared of getting it wrong. So, let's see if that fear is actually justified and hear how one email landed an actor an instant TV role, no audition required. Hey everybody, welcome back to the channel. Thank you so much for pressing play. If you are an avid viewer, you will see me do this every single week, but I'll do it for all these people who might be new. Quick credibility check. My name is Ross. I've been a professional actor now for over 20 years. In that time, I booked roles on over 40 TV shows, some will be on your screen right now. And for the last 15 years, I've been running the UK's leading membership site for TV actors, maybe just like you, who want to land more auditions, book more roles on TV, and ultimately earn more money from their careers. If that is you, come join the community after this video. It's called Act On This, the TV Actors Network. You will find it at actonthis.tv. Link in the description. If you want 50% off your first month's membership, use the discount code YouTube at checkout. And I'll explain exactly what it will get you. So, producer Pat, she's here behind the camera, email mate, massive topic yet again. How important is it to an actor's career in a 2026, 2027, 2028 world? - It's crucial. - So, I said 28 in case they watch this video in a few years. It's absolutely crucial. Honestly, we've been such advocates of actors taking control of their own acting careers, whether they've got an agent or not, and using email outreach to basically write to casting teams, casting directors, casting assistants, casting associates, put relevant material in front of them for the shows they cast. And we've seen it time and time and time again, literally thousands of times, and we've experienced it dozens of times in our own career, where that outreach has led to auditions those actors never would have got if they sat there waiting for the phone to ring, okay? And this is something you can do with or without an agent. Now, fear stops a lot of actors doing it. We've even heard terrible advice from agents, not on Act On This, it's just me So, actors who come to us and said, "My agent doesn't want me writing to casting directors." Terrible advice. I'm sorry if you're an agent and you're saying that to your actors, it's ridiculous advice. There's not been a casting director in 15 years of me running acts on this who hasn't said, "If you think you've got something to offer, let me know you exist." You know, we're only as good as the actors that we do know. What do they do at the end of all of our sessions, Petchey? - Give out their email. - They give out their email address. Would they do that if they didn't want actors writing to them? Um so quash that straight away. Why, first of all, let's cover this, and why might an actor want to reach out to a casting director direct? - To introduce themselves. Perfect reason. It's often the first reason you reach out to a casting team to start building a rapport with them, okay? You might, for example, I don't know, maybe a bit further on in your career and you're going to be on the telly. You've booked a job and you might want that team to tune in so they see your great performance and then they consider you for other projects. Um you might want to invite them to a show. You're going to be in a theater show, you want to invite them over. You might have just edited your headshots or your showreel. You've got something new to say and you want to reach out, you know, with an update. Or you might just want to reach out to reconnect and say, "You know what? I saw this show that you cast. Great job. Just want to say you're you're doing amazing." And just actually be a nice person. You know, that's that's allowed as well. So there's lots of reasons to reach out to casting teams. You should be doing it. And what I want to do for you today is just play you four clips from four great sessions that we've held for our members with four brilliant casting directors. And you're going to hear from them why and how you should reach out, okay? So it's not just me and Petchey saying it. You're hearing it directly from the people you will be writing to. So first clip I want to play out, Petchey. Harvey editor, if you could put my phone on the screen in a second, mate. Um it's from top casting director Shiraz Ahmed. Shiraz casts massive shows, works with another great casting director called Beverly Keogh. They're currently casting All Creatures Great and Small on Channel 5. Massive PBS show, huge budget. Um and this is what Shiraz said on our session about reaching out. And he uses one word in this again and again and again that I want to hammer home in a second. But let's just hear from Shiraz, awesome guy. - Where do you stand on people who have never reached out to you before, who might be feeling a bit under-confident, but they feel they've got something to offer you reaching out next week, the week after? Like, where do you stand on that and hearing from new faces? - I think actors do feel a little bit insecure about it because they don't want to bother the person they reach out to. But, I mean, guys, I mean, there's been times where somebody's emailed me, they've gotten an audition the next day. So, it does happen. Sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time to send that email, and we're looking for something that works for you. I just think there's people who put too much pressure on themselves to get it right the first time. They'll just wait, and they'll their finger will be hovering. Should I send it? Should I not? Just send it. Just send it, okay? As long as you don't keep mothering people because then they'll remember [laughter] that. If I get three emails on the trot in the same day, just keep it simple, right? The reason why you're worried about it is because you're overly complicating it. Same with some stuff in acting as well. The more you overly complicate something, that's going to be the main thing you're going to be thinking about. Simplify it. Just keep it simple, and just send it. So, just your name, where you're from, what work you've done recently, even if you've not done any work, any training that you've done, any skills that you might have. If you have any material, any headshots, there. Job done. Send it. Most casting directors will probably keep a hold of all your emails. I've got multiple folders in my inbox, which is keep in mind for this thing, keep in mind for this thing, keep in mind. And it's just actors who have emailed me. If they're not right for something, I'll put them in that folder. - Love it. What was the word you think we were going to pull out, Bets, from Shiraz that he said it quite a few times? - Simplify it. Simple. He kept saying simple, simple, simple. So, the quote I want to pull out, Harvey, if you could put this up on the screen, keep it simple and just send it, okay? It's it's massive. As I said, so many actors are just crippled by fear that they actually just maybe write that email, but they never actually send it. You heard there a few things to include in your emails as well. I mean, we'll probably go over this in another video. And but ultimately, you know, you're sending relevant material, you know, in alignment with the shows that these casting teams actually cast to basically say, "Hey, you know what? Like, I'd be perfect for the shows that you cast. Maybe you want to keep an eye on me, and maybe you want to actually invite me in for audition or give me a self-tape at some point." So, we're going to need things in there, you know, like your Spotlight link. If you're not on Spotlight, you know, maybe your Mandy link, your StarNow link, just somewhere where Shiraz can go and actually look at your work, cuz that's going to be key as well. He's going to need to see you act. You can say you're amazing in an email, but it's going to be the work that does the speaking for you. And you um you heard him there, he will file emails away. And this is so common, isn't it, mate? We get like tons of casting directors saying this. They would you know, they'll they'll file emails away to go and revisit down the line, um so that they can, you know, bring actors in that they think, you know, uh really show potential. They might not have something for them on the day they send the email, although that can happen. You might see that in a minute. Um but, they will keep hold of your correspondence. So, three little takeaways I want you to take away from that first clip there. Keep your email short and to the point. Yes, you're including all that great material, but we still want to keep it short and to the point. And number two, include that headshot, Spotlight link, and your showreel, because that work has got to be the talking for you. And three, press send instead of endlessly rewriting it, okay? There is no perfect. Don't worry about that. Um as long as it's got all that, you know, key information in it, um it is good enough. So, yeah, don't just keep writing it, writing it. It stays in your drafts, and it never gets sent. Good pitch. - Love it. - He loves it. Let's move on then to clip number two. This is a fantastic casting director, Karen Scully, um Irish casting director, responsible for massive shows like Normal People, The Dry, works with Louise Kiely, another incredible casting director. And in this clip, yeah, um it's really about looking at this outreach um as advertising almost for your business, because as an actor, you are your own business. That's exactly what you are running. So, let's get this up on the screen. Play this one through and I'll give you some takeaways. - Remember it's a business, so approach it like a business. So, make sure before you press [music] send, think of it like, if I receive this, can I see my head shot? Can I see my CV? Is my playing age there? My accurate playing age, guys. Don't include the PIN. I want you to send something that I literally just can just click on and then I'm on your Spotlight page. If you have showreel material that is like on a Vimeo, make sure that Vimeo link I can click it. Don't have to put in a password. You know, it's all these things because I'm looking at hundreds and hundreds. 3 months time, I'm going through my Ooh, I need a Scottish person for this show and I'm going through my Scottish folder. I go, "Ooh, hang on a minute. Who they?" Click on their photo, they look right. I click on their link. Oh, that That's that showreel. I remember. Oh, okay. So, it's remembering about the volume that we work with. So, therefore, that means you want to make life as easy. One click of something multiplied by a thousand is much better than 10 clicks of something where I lose the will to live. And so, then I you've lost the momentum because now I'm like, "Oh god, I have to find another 5-minute window." That might be gone. So, then you might have to wait another 2 months. That's happened. And I do, like I'll come back to you and I'll go, "I can't log in, Ross." But actually, what's also happened is they sent it the next day. It takes me another 2 months to watch it. Right. There we go. Um, yeah, Karen's great. You've really got to look at your career, your acting career as a business. There's a quote I want to pull out there. It's good good lesson for life, actually, Patch. It's basically you want to make life easy. Easy for these people. Okay, so I've got a little note here. Karen's advice, brilliant, right? Before you press send, ask yourself this question. If I receive this email, could I find everything I need in seconds? So, it goes back to what you're including in there. And one thing she mentioned there that I want to hammer home is links, okay? Your links have to work. No Spotlight pins. We hear a lot of casting directors say this, and this sounds counterintuitive. You get a Spotlight pin for those people on Spotlight, that whole [music] like, you know, row of numbers. And And people put that everywhere. It's not useful because you can't click it. Casting directors have to copy and paste it or type it in, create the URL themselves. Just give them your Spotlight link, the direct URL to your profile, and just make sure that it works. Every broken link I put here, every password-protected show reel, especially if you're on Vimeo, don't password protect stuff. Every missing attachment creates unnecessary work, and the actors who make life easy are the actors ultimately who have their work viewed. So, that's the takeaway from this. Three three things to uh to look at here. Check every link before you hit send, right? Even sometimes send yourself the email. You know, do a little test send to another email address you've got, and just make sure that everything works in it. Make sure your Spotlight, show reel, headshots are one-click away, okay? So, it's just a direct link to the stuff, not like, "Here's a link to a social media profile, and you've got to click into the link in my bio, and then here." Just one-link click to get access to your stuff. Um And ultimately, it comes down to this third point. Just respect the casting director's time. You heard Cameron there say, you know, "Thousands of emails." And one click a thousand times is way better, you know, if it's one click per actor a thousand times as opposed to three clicks, ten clicks because, you know, there's only a certain amount of time in the day for her to watch stuff. So, um yeah, treat this as a business. Make sure what you're sending, all the links work ultimately. Now, picture what I talk about timings when actors should send emails. And this is the third clip. This is from a great casting director called Seth Mason. He's currently casting Silent Witness. Just cast me in it a few months ago. Um so, thank you, Seth. He works with um other great casting directors at the casting office as well. Um and yeah, this is what Seth's saying about time and when you should actually, you know, get those emails into these inboxes. - Play your cards right with doing it during work hours because it's a 24-hour world, it's 24-hour industry and everything like that, but I think there's definitely a real desire to kind of draw those lines rather than it just being like I'd rather not get an email like that at 8:00 or 9:00. Odds are you might sit down at your desk the next day, you're clearing your emails and then you get it and you respond to it. You know, we get that everyone works different hours. - You can do those scheduling things or you can bash them out on a lunch break. There are loads of ways to doing it. People will send emails and it's like, you know, my working hours may look different from yours. I'm not expecting a reply. Stuff like that is good because there is a lot of pressure sometimes when people, you know, you're getting emails at 11:00, you think, oh god, I've seen this and I kind of I feel like I should reply and I'm going to be thinking about it when I go to bed or whatever, but I think just put your best foot forward, send it during work hours and then everyone's kind of got their head in the game and you might be more likely to click on that link, do a bit more research on that. - There you go. Um this is really really simple lesson, basically. The quote I want to pull out of that is put your best foot forward, send it during work hours. Literally as simple as that. And we've had people pitch push against this and go, but I work shifts, I work night shifts, I work day shifts. Um I don't have time in working hours to do this. What's the answer? He mentioned it there. Especially if you use Gmail. I love Gmail for this. - Scheduling emails. - Scheduling your emails. Yeah, you can write your emails whenever you want. Absolutely no problem. Save them to your drafts and then just schedule them so that your email provider, like Gmail, we use Gmail, just sends them out on your behalf at the time you want to send it. So write it 3:00 in the morning, schedule it for 11:00 a.m. the next day so that casting teams, you know, receiving those emails, you know, once they've maybe cleared their inbox. You can be quite strategic. I don't have to send it first thing because then I'm like they're going to be busy with other stuff. - [music] - You know, you want it to sort of land when maybe they've cleared off, you know, some of the stuff from the day before or whatever. But ultimately, yeah, you want to send it in work hours and and just, you know, have an understanding of of the person at the other end. Like, you know, they don't want to be receiving stuff at midnight. Um we've we've done it we did do it once through necessity where we sent a very late email, but I would never ever normally do that. So, yeah, schedule your stuff if you can. Three things to remember, so schedule your emails if you're writing them late at night. Aim for normal working hours and catch casting directors while they're in work mode. That's what I say because if you send it through the day, they're probably going to be working on projects, they're going to have their Spotlight open, they're going to be, you know, talking to agents or whatever. Um catch them in work mode, so don't send stuff on a weekend either. So, that was clip number three. And then four, this is what we mentioned at the very very start of this video. This is a brilliant story and I'm not going to spoil it. I'll let Peter Hunt, head of casting at Lime Pictures, they're responsible for Hollyoaks and lots of other great shows as well. Um and this is what can happen - [music] - if you are consistent with your outreach and you keep sending stuff to casting teams, you know, constantly. Not the same team, obviously. There's about 250 casting directors in this industry. [music] Um you can send three to five emails a week and lots of opportunity can sprout up, you know, when you when you just least expect it. And this is a perfect example of that. So, Harvey, get us on the screen, let's play this one out. Cracking story. - This is about the guy that got an instant part from an email. I had somebody from Story come in and say, "We want to add this scene into an episode, but it's filming on location tomorrow." And I just been going through my emails and watching showreels and tapes that come in. And somebody had sent in a really good showreel and it's not one that I've seen before. So, I showed - [music] - everybody the video and went, "Well, this is who you have in then." And everyone was like, "Perfect, yeah. Book them." So, booked them at 3:00 in the afternoon to come in and shoot a scene for the following day. After we'd done it all, I did email him and go, "See, sometimes you can send an email that lands at the right place, right time." - Yes. Let you go. We promised we would uh we would show you that. The quote I want to pull out there is just what he said at the end there. Sometimes you can send an email that lands at the right place at the right time. Um and that guy, yeah, literally landed a TV job on Hollyoaks, no audition required. And you heard Peter say that this was an actor who sent his stuff through and Pete knew this actor. So, this probably not the first time this actor has sent stuff through. This is a continuing forever game. You've got to continually rinse and repeat this. Probably each casting office once a quarter, I would say. And you've got to, you know, have new things to say or manufacture new things to say. Don't just keep sending the same old stuff through. But when you build rapport, you know, and you get known for good work, amazing things like that can happen. So, um so, I absolutely, you know, love love that story. Um the actor couldn't possibly have known either that was going to happen, but by being consistent, put themselves in a position where it could happen, okay? Three things to remember there. You never know what's happening behind the scenes. The right email at the right time can change your career, okay? That's just one example of that. That could be for that job or it could have been, you know, for any other job in the industry. Could completely change the trajectory of your career. And then the third point is just, yeah, consistency creates opportunities. You've got to be consistent with this. There is no point is a pitch of writing 20 emails in one week and do nothing for 6 months. - No. - You've got to continually do this. Rinse and repeat. Great work in front of great teams. And you'll find that just opportunities, you know, come your way that that it's impossible basically not to make progress if you uh if you're doing this. So, to recap, four lessons from today's video, folks. So, hopefully it's just inspiring you to just start doing this. One, don't overthink it. Two, treat your acting career like a business cuz that's exactly what it is. Three, timing matters. So, think about when you're sending these emails. And four, you never know which email will land at the perfect moment. Um and that's the truth, ultimately. Like you never know, so you've just got to keep doing it. Successful - [music] - casting directors at outreach, I put here, isn't about writing the perfect email, it's about these four things: having the confidence to reach out, making it effortless to remember you cuz you're putting great material in front of them, showing up consistently, and just giving yourself the chance to be in the right place at the right time. And if you master those things, I promise you you will generate opportunities in your career that other actors not doing this will never generate. So, please start reaching out. Um if you want to watch the full sessions there because those clips there were just a couple of minutes from what are like 2-hour sessions. We sit down almost weekly with the biggest casting directors in the game inside the actors on this dot TV membership. You'll get to watch those sessions live, watch the recordings, potentially jump on camera, and actually speak to these guests if you come and join us. Um there's over What is the picture? Over 120, I think, sessions in the members area right now? - Yeah, pretty much. - Pretty much. Um you get instant access to those if you literally sign up and then you you would get access to a brand new call every single week. Plus 24/7 support in our community hub, uh monthly meetups, we've got an iPhone app, Android app, um group coaching inside our video room. So much, and you can get your first one for just £14.50, half price, basically. Use the discount code YouTube at checkout on a monthly subscription and you will get 50% off your off your first month. So, I hope you found this useful. I said earlier, if you want to uh know how to find the email addresses of casting directors so you can actually do this outreach, I'm going to give you another video, and we've already shot it, Patch. So, if you click just up here, you can go watch that video now, and we will teach you how to find every casting director, casting assistant, and casting associate's email address in the TV industry 100% free of charge. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.