About The LA Actor Guide

The LA Actor Guide is an independent editorial reference for actors living in or moving to Los Angeles, published and edited by Joshua Michael Shelton, a Los Angeles photographer, filmmaker, and acting coach. It exists to answer the practical questions actors actually ask, with sourced facts, visible dates, and no pretense of neutrality where the editor has a stake.

What this site is for

Actors arriving in Los Angeles are handed a lot of confident advice and very little verifiable information. Class prices are quoted from memory. Agent rules get repeated wrong. Someone's cousin knows a guy who can get you a manager. Meanwhile the honest answers exist, they are just scattered across union PDFs, state labor code, platform help pages, and school tuition tables that nobody reads side by side.

This guide reads them side by side. Every price on this site links to the page that publishes it. Every legal claim traces to the statute or the union. Everything carries the date it was checked, because the acting business changes and stale advice is worse than none.

Who writes it

Every article here is written and edited by Joshua Michael Shelton. He has worked in the entertainment industry for approximately 20 years and has coached actor headshot clients for approximately 18 years. Where an article reflects his direct professional experience, it is quoted and attributed to him by name. Where it reports a fact, the fact is sourced.

There are no other contributors at launch, and no invented ones. This site does not list a fake editorial board or a review panel that does not exist. If contributors join, they will be named, credentialed, and their work labeled. See our editorial standards.

How the three sites relate

The LA Actor Guide is one of three related Los Angeles properties, and the relationship is stated openly rather than buried:

Each topic lives in exactly one place. This site explains how to choose an acting school; the directory lists the schools. This site explains what makes a good headshot; the studio sells headshot sessions. Nothing is published twice to catch more search traffic.

The disclosure that matters: Headshots LA is the editor's own business. Our headshot guides mention it as his studio, never as an independent recommendation, and only on the pages where it is genuinely relevant. Those pages carry a visible disclosure box and link to other photographers' published pricing so you can compare. If you would rather read about headshots from someone with no stake in the answer, that is a reasonable instinct, and the sources at the bottom of each article are there for you.

How this site makes money

Right now, it does not. The LA Actor Guide has no advertising, no sponsored posts, no affiliate links, and no paid placement. The only commercial connection is the editor's own studio, disclosed above.

If that changes, it gets disclosed before it changes anything you read. Our advertising and sponsorship policy sets the rules in advance: paid placement will never be presented as editorial judgment, and no advertiser will ever get to influence, preview, or veto a guide.

What we will never do

• Publish a price, address, rule, or claim we could not verify from a primary source
• Rank businesses without telling you the criteria
• Invent authors, reviewers, ratings, or testimonials
• Present the editor's own studio as an unrelated third party's recommendation
• Take money to change editorial content
• Copy another site's writing, or let AI generate filler to pad a page

When we get something wrong

We will. When it happens, tell us and we will fix it visibly, with a dated correction note on the page. That process is documented in our corrections policy and the form is at report a correction. Schools, agencies, and platforms are welcome to flag anything inaccurate about them, and a human reads every message.

Start here

New to Los Angeles or new to the business? Start with The Complete Guide to Acting in Los Angeles, which maps the whole path and links to every section. Looking for something specific? The FAQ answers the twenty questions we get asked most, and the glossary translates the vocabulary nobody explains to you on set.

Know a resource actors should have? Suggest it.