Actor Resume Examples & Acting Resume Format

This sample is for a working actor with independent film, a few TV days and steady regional theater. Every name, production and company is invented. Note what is missing: no employment history, no home address, no dates on individual credits, and no summary paragraph. The line under the name is a stats line (vocal range, local hire, passport), which is what casting expects instead of prose.

If you have written a normal resume before, unlearn most of it. Casting directors look at hundreds of these a day and expect a very specific shape. Getting the shape wrong marks you as new before anyone reads a single credit.

• One page. Not one and a bit. It is trimmed to 8 by 10 inches and attached to the back of your headshot, so anything longer gets cut off literally.
• No dates on credits. Acting resumes do not list years next to roles. Dates invite guessing about your age and about gaps.
• No home address. City and whether you are a local hire, that is all. Casting needs to know if you can work in a market without travel and lodging.
• No employment history. Your restaurant job does not go on this document, no matter how long you worked there.
• No objective, no summary paragraph in the traditional sense, and no references line.
• Credits are grouped by medium, not by date: Film, Television, Theater, and in that order for screen actors. Theater actors put Theater first.
• Never list background or extra work as a credit. Casting can tell, and it reads as padding.
• Do not name individual commercials. Write 'Commercial conflicts available upon request' so you do not lose a booking to a competing brand.

Each credit is three or four columns: production title, your role type, then the director, theater or production company. The role word is doing real work here, because it tells casting the size of the job you have actually done.

• Film role types: Lead, Supporting, Principal, Day Player. Use Principal or Day Player for small speaking roles; avoid 'Featured' as it can be mistaken for background work.
• Television role types: Series Regular, Recurring, Guest Star, Co-Star, Under 5 (for daytime). These have contractual meanings, so use the one that matches your contract.
• Theater: name your actual character, not a role type. 'Nora' says more than 'Lead'.
• Add the director's name for film and the theater's name for stage. Casting recognizes directors and theaters and it is often what earns the audition.
• For student and short films, list them under Film normally. Do not hide them, and do not label them 'student film' unless you want to.
• Understudy credits count. Write 'Viola (understudy, 4 performances)' so it is honest and still shows you were in the company.
• New Media, Voice-Over, Industrial and Print get their own small headings only if you have several credits in that medium.
• Order within each section by prominence, not by recency. Your best credit goes on top.

The special skills list is not filler. It is a searchable database of things you can be booked for, and actors get called from it constantly. It should be six to twelve lines, all of them true today, and all of them provable in a room.

• Dialects and accents: name them precisely. 'RP British' and 'Irish (Dublin)' are more useful than 'British and Irish accents'. Only list what you could do cold in an audition.
• Languages: state your real level. Fluent, conversational, or 'can perform memorized text in'. Bilingual actors book from this line more than any other.
• Stage combat: unarmed, rapier and dagger, broadsword, quarterstaff. If you hold Society of American Fight Directors Actor Combatant recognition, say so and note it is current.
• Singing: voice type and range, and whether you read music. Musical theater actors should add belt range.
• Instruments, with honest level. 'Guitar (intermediate)' is fine. 'Guitar' when you know three chords is not.
• Movement and sport: dance styles and levels, gymnastics, martial arts with belt, horseback riding with discipline, swimming, skating, skiing, motorcycle license, scuba certification.
• Practical production skills: teleprompter, self-tape setup, improv training levels, puppetry, clowning, motion capture experience, ADR.
• Documents that unblock a booking: valid US passport, driver's license and whether you drive manual transmission, work authorization for other countries.
• One or two genuinely odd ones at the bottom. Casting people remember them, and they get used more often than you would expect.

Casting reads training to see who shaped you and whether you are still working on the craft. A list of famous school names with no teachers is weaker than a short list with the right names attached.

• Group by discipline: Acting, On-Camera, Voice and Speech, Movement, Improv, Musical Theater. Two or three lines each is plenty.
• Write the technique, the school and the teacher: 'Two-year Meisner conservatory, The Fennimore Studio (Alan Fennimore)'.
• Mark ongoing class as ongoing. It signals you are in the room every week, which matters to casting.
• Put a degree in only if you have one, on one line, at the bottom of training. A B.F.A. is a credential, not a credit.
• Workshops and intensives count if they are substantial. A weekend audition workshop does not need its own line.
• If you have very few credits, expand training and special skills to fill the page honestly rather than padding credits.

Every actor starts with an empty page, and casting knows it. A beginner resume is judged on whether it is honest, well laid out and shows you are training. What gets you rejected is faking credits or filling the page with extra work.

1. 1Keep the standard layout. Same headings, same one page, same headshot attachment. An empty but correctly formatted resume looks professional. A creative reinvention looks new.
2. 2List what you have actually done: school plays, community theater, university productions, student films, web series, a friend's short. Character name and the theater or director, same as any other credit.
3. 3Put Training at the top instead of Film. If your training is your strongest material, lead with it. This is normal and casting will not blink.
4. 4Enroll in a class before you send anything out. One current weekly class turns 'no experience' into 'in training with a named teacher'.
5. 5Build the special skills section properly. This is where a beginner competes evenly with a working actor, because a dialect or a skill is a bookable asset regardless of credits.
6. 6Say your union status plainly: non-union, or SAG-eligible if you have earned it. Non-union is not a weakness at this stage.
7. 7Do student films and non-union shorts to fill the Film section. Directors from film school hire the same actors for years.
8. 8Get a decent headshot before you worry about the resume. A weak headshot loses the audition before the resume is turned over.

The base format holds, but each of these has its own expectations and searching for the general template will steer you wrong.

• Musical theater: Theater comes first, then Musical Theater as its own section if you have enough. Add voice type and range to the header (soprano, belt to E5), plus dance training and level, since dance calls are a real filter.
• Voice-over: this is a different document. Casting listens to a demo reel first, so the link matters more than credits. List categories (commercial, animation, audiobook, video game, e-learning), your home studio setup with the microphone and interface, and turnaround time.
• Child and teen actors: no home address, no school name, and no personal social media. Put the parent or guardian's contact as the only phone number. Add current age range rather than birth date, and include work permit status. Check your state's requirements: many states require an entertainment work permit for a minor, and California also requires a Coogan trust account.
• Commercial-only actors: keep conflicts off the page, note improv training and any on-camera hosting, and add whether you have a valid passport for out-of-country shoots.
• Theater actors submitting for college or graduate auditions: list every production including high school, add all training and teachers, and include the audition monologues you have prepared if the program asks.
• Background or stand-in work: keep this off your acting resume entirely. Track it separately for your own records.

• Print it on 8 by 10 inch paper, or trim a letter-size print to 8 by 10, and staple it to the back of your headshot at all four corners so it does not flap in a stack.
• Name and union status at the top, large. Contact details next: your agent's phone if you have one, or your own cell and email if you do not. Never your address.
• Height, hair and eye color are still common in the header for stage and commercial work. Weight and age are not listed.
• Font: something plain and readable at arm's length, around 10 to 12 point. No design flourishes, no color blocks, no photo on the resume side.
• Keep a PDF version named firstname-lastname-acting-resume.pdf for email submissions, and keep your Actors Access, Casting Networks and Backstage profiles matching it. Casting will notice if the online credits and the paper credits differ.
• Update the online profiles the same week you update the paper one. Most submissions now happen through those platforms, and self-tape requests come with a deadline of days.
• In the UK the same document is called an acting CV and is usually two columns with dates included. If you are submitting in the US, use the format above instead.
• Bring at least ten printed headshot and resume sets to any in-person audition or general meeting.

“I flip the headshot over and look for three things: who trained you, which directors and theaters have already trusted you, and whether the special skills are real. If the page has dates, an address and a list of restaurant jobs, I know before the slate what kind of session this will be.”