How to Prepare for an Actor Headshot Session

Start two weeks out. Get your haircut 7 to 10 days before the shoot so it settles, hold your skin routine steady rather than trying anything new, protect your sleep for the last three nights, and pull three to five tops per look from your own closet in solid, muted or complementary colors with clean necklines. On the day, arrive early, bring more options than you think you need, and come with two or three specific roles in mind so you and the photographer have something concrete to shoot toward. Preparation is the cheapest quality upgrade in this process, because rest, skin and wardrobe are things retouching cannot add back later.

What should you do two weeks out?

Work backward from the shoot date on three tracks.

1. Book the haircut for 7 to 10 days before. Fresh cuts look fresh, which is the problem. Hair needs about a week to lose the just-cut edge and start moving the way it normally moves. Same window for color. Do not change your style, and do not let anyone talk you into something new; the photo has to match the person who walks into the room three months from now.
2. Do not start anything new on your skin. Two weeks out is the wrong time for a new product, a new facial, or a first-time treatment: the downside is a reaction you cannot undo and the upside is marginal. Keep your routine, keep moisturizing, drink water. Headshots LA's published prep guidance adds two specifics worth stealing: avoid new skincare right before, and do not schedule a session right after a sunburn or heavy tanning.
3. Protect the last three nights of sleep. This is the one actors skip and the one that shows. Tired eyes photograph as tired eyes. Keep salt and alcohol low the night before, because both read as puffiness, and puffiness lands directly under the eyes, the exact real estate you are paying for.

Men: plan the shave or beard trim deliberately. If you shoot with stubble, decide how many days of growth you want and count backward. Most studios keep touch-up supplies, but arriving at the length you intend is your job.

I can retouch a blemish in about four seconds. I cannot retouch in a night of sleep, and I cannot retouch in a haircut that has had time to relax. Actors spend hundreds on a session, show up on four hours of sleep after a shift, and then wonder why the eyes look flat. The preparation is not a formality. It is most of the picture. - Joshua Michael Shelton, editor

How do you choose wardrobe for a headshot session?

Pick clothes that disappear. Every wardrobe rule descends from one principle: nothing may compete with your face.

• Solids over patterns. At thumbnail scale a checked shirt becomes a gray smear your face has to fight.
• No logos, no text, no statement jewelry. They date the photo and steal attention.
• Necklines matter most. The frame is chest-up, so the neckline is most of what is visible and it frames your jaw. Clean crew necks, simple V-necks and open collars work. Anything fussy or high crowds your face.
• Avoid bright white and pure black. White draws the eye and blows out next to skin; dead black swallows into a dark background. Off-whites, grays and mid-tones are safer.
• Color against your skin, not the color wheel. The test is whether a color makes your skin and eyes come forward or look gray. Hold it up in good light and look at your face, not the shirt. Headshots LA's published guidance points commercial looks toward colors that complement your eyes, skin and hair, and theatrical looks toward muted grays, blacks and earth tones in modern cuts.
• Fit is not optional. A well-cut cheap top beats an expensive one bunching at the shoulder. Iron or steam everything; a wrinkle at the collar is a retouching bill.

Bring three to five tops per booked look, plus a simple jacket or layer. More options cost nothing and let the photographer switch when something is not working on camera, which happens constantly and has nothing to do with how the garment looks in a mirror. Bring clothes you own and wear. The goal is you on a good day, not a character in a costume.

What about grooming and makeup?

Natural, and built for a high resolution sensor. The camera sees more than a mirror does, so anything heavy reads as heavy.

For makeup: even out the skin without burying it. Foundation as natural as coverage allows, matte rather than dewy since shine is the enemy under lights, lips natural, and the eyes given the most attention because the eyes are the product. Skip shimmer and frost, which catch light in ways that look like mistakes.

Should you hire a makeup artist? Optional, and worth it more often than actors expect, particularly across multiple looks. An MUA does two jobs: the application, and maintaining you through two hours and several wardrobe changes while you concentrate on acting. The second is the one people underestimate. Men benefit too, and it is mostly invisible work: shine control and evening out redness.

LA norms as of July 2026, from published rate pages: Headshots LA lists hair and makeup from recommended artists at generally $150 to $300; Stepanyan Photography lists $150 to $200; LA Photo Spot lists $150 to $275; Marc Cartwright Headshots publishes $250 for up to two looks plus $50 per additional look. So $150 to $300 is the realistic band, quoted separately from the session fee. Ask two things before booking one: does the artist stay for the whole session, and do they shoot headshots specifically rather than beauty or events. Editorial makeup on a headshot is a common and expensive mistake.

What should you bring to the shoot?

• Every wardrobe option, on hangers, steamed.
• Grooming kit: comb or brush, your hair products, hair ties.
• Makeup for touch-ups, plus blotting papers or translucent powder, and lip balm.
• A lint roller. Studios have them; yours will be the one that works.
• Water and a snack. Sessions run one to three hours and low blood sugar shows in the face.
• Your two or three reference roles, written down.
• Parking money, and the address checked in advance. Arrive 10 to 15 minutes early so you are settled rather than sprinting, which is the studio's own posted advice and true of every studio in this city.

Leave at home anything you hope will look better on camera than in the mirror, and anyone whose opinion makes you self-conscious. A supportive friend helps. An unsupportive one is expensive.

How do you work with the photographer?

Give them material to direct you with. The gap between a good session and a wasted one is usually the first ten minutes of conversation, and most of it is your side.

Bring reference roles, not adjectives. "I want to look approachable" describes a mood and produces a mood. "I want to be plausible as the resident who is out of her depth on her first night in the ER" is a circumstance, and circumstances produce faces. Two or three specific roles you could realistically book, ideally off actual breakdowns you have submitted to, are the most useful thing you can hand a photographer.

Have the shot list conversation before anyone picks up a camera: how many looks, which is commercial and which is theatrical, how the time splits, and which one wins if you run long. Our commercial versus theatrical guide covers what each look is doing so you can have that conversation in specifics.

Ask how they direct. Some talk you into a state, some give you circumstances, some shoot silently and expect you to bring it. None is wrong, but know which you are walking into. And say so in the moment when something is not working. Ten minutes of polite discomfort costs you a look.

What is the right mindset on the day?

Treat it as acting work, because it is. The actors who get the best results show up with something to play rather than something to endure. The camera is not judging you; it is recording what you are thinking, which is why "look at the lens" is useless on its own and "look at the lens as though you have just recognized someone across a room" produces a photograph.

Practically: eat something, arrive early, give yourself a beat before the first frame. Expect the first fifteen minutes to be warm-up and do not panic; nobody's best work is in the first ten frames. Your face has muscle memory, and running expressions in the mirror beforehand, surprise, amusement, concern, is a real technique rather than a superstition. It is also the studio's own posted advice.

The best sessions I shoot feel like scene work, not like the DMV. When an actor walks in with three real roles they want to be seen for, we have somewhere to go, and by frame thirty something true starts happening. When they walk in and ask me to make them look good, we are just taking pictures of a face, and that is exactly what the picture looks like. - Joshua Michael Shelton, editor

What happens after the session?

Selects. Most LA studios deliver a private online gallery, often within a day or two, and then you choose which images get retouched. This is where actors reliably go wrong, because you are the worst available judge of your own face; you will hate a frame casting would love. Loop in your agent, who knows what is getting you called in, and ask your photographer for their picks, since they have watched hundreds of these get submitted. Pick fast rather than perfectly. Galleries sitting unselected for a month are the leading cause of headshots that never get used. Etiquette: your retouching selects are the package number, and extras are a paid add-on rather than a favor, published on LA rate pages at roughly $20 to $35 per image as of July 2026.

Retouching rounds. Ask up front how many revision rounds you get and what the turnaround is; it varies and is frequently not on the rate page. Reasonable requests are specific and subtractive: the stray hair, the blemish, the collar wrinkle. Requests to reshape your face are how you end up with an image casting resents when you walk in the door. The complete guide covers why casting objects so consistently.

Files. Ask for a web-sized and a print-sized version of each retouched image, in sRGB. That covers everything. Requirements are permissive rather than restrictive: as of July 2026 Casting Networks publishes that it accepts jpg, jpe, jpeg, png and gif up to 30 MB with a 360 x 360 pixel minimum. Actors Access, the casting platform run by Breakdown Services, includes 2 photos and 1 free SlateShot on its free Starter tier, the SlateShot being a seven second video attached one-to-one to a specific headshot. The constraint is not the file spec, it is the slot count, so choose ruthlessly.