How Many Auditions Does It Take To Book ONE TV Role? (5 Agents Reveal All!)

How many auditions does it take to book one TV role? I asked five UK acting agents that exact question and I think their answers might surprise you. Hey everybody, welcome back to the channel. As always, thank you, I say it every week, but thank you for pressing play, it really means a lot. If you're seeing me for the first time, super quick credibility check. My name is Ross, I've been a professional actor now for over 20 years, can't believe it, and in that time I've 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 what is now the UK's leading membership platform for TV actors, maybe just like you, actors who want to land more auditions, book more roles on TV, ultimately earn more money from their acting career. It's called Act On This, the TV Actors Network. You will find it at actonthis.tv and if you use the discount code YOUTUBE at checkout, you'll get 50% off your first month. I'll leave it all in the description, can't ask for fairer than that. Petch, how are you? Producer Petch is here on camera. Hi, I'm great, yeah. He is great, absolutely great. We've got a great topic yet again to talk about, we're back on the sofa actually, we've been doing quite a lot of vlogging recently as well, I hope you've been enjoying the vlogs behind the scenes of our careers. We did a great vlog that I'll link to actually at the end of this video because it's very relevant for the topic we're going to discuss today, where we took you behind the scenes of me actually shooting a self-tape just last week for a brand new Amazon series that as of right now, Petch, we don't know whether I've got or not. So I just heard a bing, like a text, maybe that was my agent going, you got the job, and that would be nice though, so I'll keep you posted on that, but I'll link to the video at the end of this one because I think it's relevant. We're talking today, Petch, about a question and a theme that has been coming up like so regularly for our members, there's 1,200 members on Acton, there's 1,200 actors, and we've had hundreds literally about to talk about this inside our forum over the last month or so. And that is this, I've written it down as a question to sum it up. A lot of people are saying this, look, I've had X number of TV auditions and not booked a job this year, am I broken? So we're like, well, no, you're probably not broken, but they don't believe us sometimes. So what I've done is I've gone directly to the agents who look after hundreds of actors, and I've asked for the data. So to get you up to speed, I basically went to five different types of agency, okay, from the smaller agents, we started off with a co-op Petch, a cooperative agency, co-ops are agents run by the actors who are represented by them, so the actors are basically their own agent within that, everyone does a little bit in the office every month, up to boutique agencies that have maybe sort of 60, 70 clients, maybe run by like one agent, up to bigger boutique agencies, right up to leading London agencies. So we've taken a great cross-section of agents here, and I literally went to them with this question and said, how many auditions is it taking for your actors to actually book a TV job? And I'll just dive straight into it, this is what the agents told me, this is the headline ultimately for this video. Get this big, Harvey, editor, get this on the screen, massive. The average TV role booking rates across a year for most actors at these agencies, you know, on their books, was five to 12%. Okay, now there were some outliers, and we'll talk about those in a minute, but first let's just look at what five to 12% actually means, okay. So I'm talking about the booking rates, so the number of auditions they get to the number of roles they actually book. So at 5%, okay, if your booking rate at the lower end is 5%, you're booking roughly one TV role for every 20 auditions you get, okay. And they could be in the room or self-tapes, I guarantee most of these, the majority of these are self-tapes, right, we're all booking off tapes nowadays, we're all auditioning off tapes, and hopefully booking off tapes. And so 5%, roughly one job every 20 auditions. Now if we move up pitch to the mid-range, okay, actors who are in the mid-range of this booking rate, at 8%, they are booking roughly one job every 12 to 13 auditions or self-tapes. And then the top band for most actors, okay, so actors, you know, who are really crushing it within these agencies, at 12%, a 12% booking rate, they're booking roughly one job every eight to nine auditions, okay. So maybe you're thinking, okay, I fall into one of those bands right now. Now I said about outliers, there were a small number of actors at each of these agencies who were really well established, they've been in the game a long time, you know, they're no longer looking for, you know, the one, two, three scene roles, these guys are like leading shows or they're guest leads in things, and they were booking as high, I mean this is top, top, top end, no one was booking more than this, they were booking at 25%, so that is booking one TV role for every four auditions they get, but they were a tiny, tiny minority, literally like one to two actors per agency. The majority of the others fell into those bands of five to 12%, you know, as that booking rate. So let's put this in a context patch, what does this, you know, what does this mean for people, okay, and this is real data from real agencies, it's not science, obviously there's a lot more agents in the industry, but this covers roughly 600 actors careers. I want to hammer this point home for you because I think it's going to make you feel better, at a 5% booking rate you could hear no 19 times for every one yes and still be absolutely within the normal range these agents are seeing, okay, so at 5% you are completely normal, because how many people come to us patch and they're like, oh my god I've had 13 auditions this year, I haven't booked one, it must be terrible, my auditions are rubbish. It's a lot, isn't it? It's the majority of people who are, you know, who are getting tapes, not booking, just suddenly put it all on themselves and like, oh my god there must be something wrong. There isn't, you're completely normal if you're within these ranges. So what does this actually mean for you and your auditions? I want to pull up three points here, okay, point number one, don't panic after a handful of tapes, right, if this year you've had 5, 8, 10 tapes and you haven't had a booking, it's very easy, like I say, to just think my auditions aren't good enough, I'm not good enough, everything's broken, but based on these numbers that we're seeing from real agents, real actors, you're not broken, you're certainly not on your own, you're actually in the majority, so that's the first thing that I want to say. Second thing that I want to say, this is really important, okay, ask your agent for feedback. Now what I said before about most of us, you know, getting self-tapes, booking off self-tapes, great thing, I love self-tapes, great thing about the environment now in the industry and how we actually audition, is when you submit a tape, a lot of time it goes via your agent, so your agent should be watching your tapes. Back in the day when we all just auditioned in the room, your agent wasn't in the room with you, they couldn't see your auditions, they couldn't give you feedback, they didn't know how well you were doing, your agent should be, I hope, watching your self-tapes before they submit them, or if you're submitting them yourselves, direct to casting, you should be copying your agent in and they should still be watching, that's what I do a lot of the time, and I would hope a good agent is not allowing you to submit 10, 13 tapes or whatever that aren't, you know, up to standard without telling you, so they should be watching and they should be checking on your performance, on your technical setup, how well you're doing, and if things are wrong or could be improved, they should be telling you that, and if they're not, you know, or you're not sure, ask for feedback, right, you are business partners with your agent, you need to get some feedback on your tapes if you're worried about them, okay. Third point I want to say here is, this is really important, a great audition can still equal no. We've all had an impact, haven't we? How many times have we done self-tapes, and we've done this, you and I have done this, where we've been like, that self-tape I just shot is absolutely banging, I'm sure I'm going to get the role, and you don't get the role, do you? So many times, I mean, this tape that I'm going to link to at the end of this video, that I just put in, I think it's a cracking tape, mate. We don't know yet whether I'm going to get the job or not, I really hope I do, fingers crossed, but if I don't, I know it's not because of the quality of the tape, the tape is absolutely banging, so I put a few things here, so listen, performance is only one part of casting, okay, physical appearance, a director or writer's taste, and production decisions, you know, all of these things can affect who ultimately books that gig, okay, so when you say to yourself, you know, I didn't book the job, it doesn't automatically mean, you know, I gave a bad audition, you know, we know that tape's good, I haven't given a bad audition, if I don't get it, it's something else that's gone, you know, it's gone against me, it's probably out of my control, so they're just things that I wanted to mention to you, so what should you do with this data then, you know, that we've just given you, this is really important, if you're going to use this to your advantage, you are going to need to track your numbers as well, okay, and what I mean by that is you're going to start recording the number of auditions that you are getting compared to the number of bookings you are getting, and we do a little bit of maths on this, so your bookings divided by your auditions times 100 equals your booking rate percentage, and you want to judge it like over a meaningful period of time as well, like a year, okay, and at that point you can then compare to where you're at, are you in that lower range at a 5% booking rate, mid-range of 8%, top range of 12%, or are you just crushing it and you're, you know, one of those acts that just suddenly goes straight to a 25% booking rate, that's very rare, don't be downhearted if you're not in the 25% rate, but if you're anywhere between 5 and 12, you're in, you know, you're in really, really good shape, so you want to start, yeah, tracking your numbers, second thing, you want to start looking for other positive signals, because it's not all just about booking the job, right, you can still have lots of successes with your auditions that don't result in you actually landing the role, so are you getting recalls for a start, that's a massive positive signal you're doing, you know, doing well with your tapes and your auditions, are the same casting directors requesting you again and again, are they championing you, right, because when they do request you again and again, again you're doing something right, okay, are you getting positive feedback from these casting directors when you ask for it, maybe, or your agent asks for it, are you getting down to like the last couple, this has happened to me a few times, it's disheartening when you don't get it, but it's still nice to know you got down to the last couple, you know, because you versus one other actor and you always get that thing, don't you, where they say they just went in another direction, they just went another way, Ross, well what way did you want to go that's not my way, it's my way or the bloody highway, and so yeah, if you're getting that last couple, brilliant, you know, brilliant, brilliant sign that your auditions are working, and then the third point I just want to bring out of this, and this is massively important when you're working out your, you know, your booking rate effectively, you want to hunt out the right auditions and your agent obviously should be hunting out the right auditions for you as well, your booking rate can be skewed massively if you're constantly auditioning for roles that you're not right for in the first place, okay, and this happens a lot, you do get some agents or some actors that just want auditions and they're crowbarred into productions or they're being seen for stuff that, you know, they're just not right for in the first place, of course you're not going to get the job and that's going to drag your booking rate down, so you want to focus on opportunities where your casting type, your playing age, your look, your skills, your experience, fit the brief like a glove, I promise you those those actors who are flying at a 25% rate, they're not being put forward for everything, they're known for doing one thing well, they're established, casting are coming to them for that thing and that's why their booking rate is so high, because, you know, they're doing the thing that they specialise in effectively, so you want to be looking for those briefs that really do fit you like a glove, don't just chase more auditions, you want to chase the right auditions, crucial or what Perch? Very crucial. It isn't it, you know, it really really is, it can be tempting to go to your agent, put me forward for everything and they go, they get a bit desperate don't they and just go, we've got to earn some money so let's just put all our clients forward for every single thing and then you all end up spending hours on tapes and we've all done it, you know, this has happened in the past when I've been with different agents and stuff where you're doing a tape and you're thinking, why the hell am I even doing this? I wouldn't give myself this job, you know, they've asked, we didn't want Perch once, I'm sure it's like a 50 year old or something, wasn't it? Perch is 41, I'm like, if the casting brief is 50 to 60, you look so young, like you're not gonna get this job, unless, you know, they've widened the search or whatever, but you know in your heart sometimes when you're doing an audition, you're like, I've got no chance of, you know, of getting this, it's still sometimes worth doing because if you put a cracking audition in, even if, you know, you're not going to get it, the casting director sees you, sees that you're really good at what you do and they might see you for other stuff, but you want to be really hunting out those auditions that fit you like a glove. So, it's quite a short video this week, let's sort of like wrap this up, right? If these agents are seeing booking rates of around 5 to 12%, this is the thing that is sobering and you've got to look at this positively, this might blow you away a little bit when you think about it, 88 to 95% of your auditions won't turn into jobs and that can be completely normal, okay? So, there's nothing wrong with you, that's completely normal. So, the next time you get a TV audition, right, you don't book the role, it doesn't mean you did something wrong, really want you to know that you're not necessarily doing anything wrong, it might simply mean that you're an actor, like all of us, okay? This is a cross-section of 600 careers with that 5 to 12% rate, if you're within that band, there is nothing wrong with you, you're just an actor like everybody. So, let us know your thoughts, I just hope this has put your mind at rest, we've been asked this question so many times, how many auditions should I be converting into jobs? Now you know, roughly, anywhere up to 20 auditions for one booking is what most actors are finding these days. I would love to know your numbers if you're happy to, you know, to give us those, how many auditions did it take you to book your last TV job? Was it 3, was it 8, was it 10, was it more than that? Let us know in the comments, you know, absolutely, just be interesting for us to kind of compare as well, you know, what you guys out there are experiencing. The key, you know, if you've not got a job yet at all, is just to keep going, it really is a numbers game, provided you are being put forward and you are auditioning for those briefs that do fit you like a glove, that is key, it really is a numbers game after that, please keep the faith, keep on going. And lastly, if you want to know how to get more auditions that fit you like a glove, once you get those auditions, if you want to know how to smash yourself out of the park and you want to hear directly out of the mouths of the biggest casting directors, casting assistants, casting associates in the game and wider professionals as well, directors, writers, producers, will you come and get your acts on this membership, you're absolutely doing your career a massive disservice if you're not part of this community, literally every week we sit down with the biggest names in the game, the casting directors will tell you exactly what they're looking for, what they're working on, we had Sonia Allen last night, Petch, top TV casting director, just cast ITV's The Blame, BBC's The Split Up, we had her associate Leila Alyon, she's amazing as well, they gave their email addresses out Petch, on the call they're like send me a showreel, introduce yourself, they've walked us through self-tapes, how you can nail your self-tape with them, what they want to see and you are really like holding yourself back if you're not getting involved in this and it's cheap as chips basically, if you use the discount code at checkout, YouTube remember, you get your first month half price, just go to actonthis.tv, I'll leave a link in the description and come and join us, it'll be the best thing you ever do for your career and like Petch, subscribe, I always forget to say that, like, subscribe, do all that good stuff, turn your notifications on as well so you never miss a video and I will link you to that video that I said, that vlog where we go behind the scenes of my latest audition, where I'm auditioning for an Amazon show, I think I did a cracking job of it, we don't know if I'm going to get the part yet, maybe it'll up my booking rate, maybe I'll drag it down, who knows but if you want to watch it, click this video here, really hope that has been useful for you and we will see you on the next one, love to you all, until then, bye for now!