Make yourself easier to sell, and hand your rep the angle. Request a submission report once a year and build relationships with the casting offices in it, send short pitch requests when a role is genuinely right, remind your rep of casting directors who already know you, keep your materials current, and deliver every tape early.
What you never do is ask "why aren't you getting me more auditions?" It is extremely rude, and it turns a collaboration into a complaint.
Kym here. I have more than 80 film and TV credits and reps in several territories, and this is what I have learned about the half of the relationship I control.
Start with what is on their plate. A rep may be submitting between 50 and 150 clients through the casting websites, and submitting is not pitching.
Submitting is clicking your name onto the list of actors who fit a role. Pitching is a specific email saying this actor is perfect for this part, and here is why.
It eats time, and nobody can do it for every client every day.
Your rep may have submitted you 100 plus times for every audition you get. So gratitude is the first stop.
Reps also trim their rosters from time to time. They look at talent and potential first, then your booking to audition ratio, then professionalism and how high maintenance you are.
You cannot control booking, but you can control the rest.
A submission report. Ask for one once a year, around December before everyone goes on holidays.
Then analyse it. Which casting offices are you being submitted to, and which of them have never brought you in?
Those are the relationships to build, at workshops and panels.
You can also ask whether casting says anything consistent when they pass, and what other clients did to get into those rooms. That is collaboration.
Give them the hook in two or three sentences: you know the casting director, you have the accent, you have the nursing experience for the nurse.
Ask in advance whether they would like you to write the whole pitch email, because some reps will tweak your draft and send it.
Here is why it works. I once sent my manager a role with three pieces of information: it is casting and it is right for me, I know the casting director, and I will work locally in that state.
He only had the first. He texted the casting director, and ten minutes later I had the audition.
Keep pitch requests to three or four a month at most, and only when the role is right.
Reps have 50 or 100 clients and cannot remember whose casting relationships are whose. So tell them:
Just a reminder that this casting director has brought me in four times. They really like me.
An unusual share of the roles you ask to be submitted for turn into auditions, because the request prompts your rep to follow up with a call or an email. Plenty of reps never make that follow up on their own.
Your network counts too. I follow a screen funding body, saw that a project had been financed with a director I met at a party three years earlier, and asked my agent to pitch me on that relationship.
I got the audition.
The biggest problem I see in actors' materials is not missing work. It is old material piled up so the new work is not visible.
Keep one shared folder your rep can pull from without asking you:
When your rep pushes for you, their reputation is on the line. So make the tape professional and early.
Confirm every audition on the casting app, then confirm by email with a thank you in it, every single time. On a ten day window, get your tape in within the first three days.
If you need an extension, ask early and explain why. Keep those asks rare, so your rep is happy to fight for one.
Only book out what you genuinely would not drop. And tell your reps the day a job ends, because they will not remember.
I told my agent a job had wrapped and had an audition the next day.
Do not report every self submission you make on an open casting site. If they ask, send a summary.
Work out where you sit first:
Email is the default, because reps can answer in their own time and it is in writing. My rules for every email:
When you submit yourself for a role that is genuinely right, look up the filmmakers and contact them directly with your reel and why you suit it.
Casting workshops are the other engine. Over the years I did around 250, spent about 20 grand, and booked about 150 grand of work from the relationships.
More on finding your own work in acting jobs.
If it is still not working after you have acted on their suggestions, the exit is in writing, at the end of a contract period, starting with thanks. The detail is in acting agent contracts.
The full class, How To Be A Great Client For Your Representation, covers the folder, the blurb, the email rules and every ask in detail. How The Film Industry Works shows how an audition is born, from breakdown to offer.
Both sit in our get repped hub, along with how to get an acting agent. You can watch them with a 7-day free trial.
Three or four times a month at most, and only for roles that are genuinely right for you. Send two or three sentences on why you specifically suit it, and ask whether they would like you to draft the pitch email.
No. Hundreds of actors pass through a casting office each month, and the real feedback is the callback.
Asking every time eats your rep's day. If auditions dry up, ask whether casting says anything consistent when they pass instead.
A report from your rep showing the roles and casting offices they have submitted you to. Request one once a year, look at which offices keep seeing your name without bringing you in, and build those relationships.
Not each one. Reps do not need to hear about every role you submit yourself for on an open casting site.
If they ask, send a short summary.
Early. On a ten day window, aim for the first three days.
A couple of hours before the deadline is the absolute floor and the day before is better, because reps may have notes and casting often watches tapes as they arrive.