The Acting Resume Guide: Format, Credits, and What to Leave Off

An acting resume is one page, sized to 8x10 to match a headshot, and organized as header, unions, stats, credits, training, special skills. In Los Angeles the credits run film and television first, theater after. Every credit names the production, your role type and the director or company, and every line has to be true, because the credit categories that matter most (co-star, guest star, series regular) map to real SAG-AFTRA contract categories that a casting office can look up. What you leave off matters as much as what you list.

What goes on a standard acting resume?

Seven blocks, in this order, on one page.

1. Header. Your name in the largest type on the page. Under it: union status, and your contact. If you have representation, list your agent or manager's name and phone rather than your home address. Unrepresented actors list a phone number and a professional email. Never a home address.
2. Unions. SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), AEA (Actors' Equity Association), or "SAG-AFTRA eligible" if that is accurate. If you belong to none, leave the line off rather than writing "non-union."
3. Stats. Height, hair, eyes. Weight is optional and increasingly omitted. Never list your age or date of birth. Age range is generally handled by the casting platform, not the resume.
4. Film. Three columns: title, role type, director and production company.
5. Television. Same three columns: title, role type, network or director.
6. Theater. Title, role name, theater and director.
7. Training and Special Skills. Training first, skills last.

Formatting rules that matter more than they should: one page, ever. Sized to 8x10 inches, not 8.5x11, so that when it is stapled or printed to the back of a headshot there is no overhang to trim. Legible body type at 10 to 12 points. No photos on the resume itself. No colored backgrounds. No graphic design.

How do LA and New York acting resumes differ?

Ordering, mostly. A Los Angeles resume puts Film and Television above Theater, because the LA audition economy is overwhelmingly screen work and the person reading it is casting screen work. A New York resume conventionally leads with Theater, and within theater distinguishes Broadway, Off-Broadway, Regional and Tour, because that hierarchy carries real information there.

If you work both coasts, keep two versions of the same file and send the one that matches the room. Nothing else changes: no credit is added or removed, only the section order.

The related LA convention is that the theater section is not padding. A long list of Los Angeles 99-seat productions with no screen work reads as a theater actor, which is a real thing to be, but be deliberate about it rather than accidental.

What do co-star, guest star, recurring and series regular actually mean?

They are billing conventions, and this is where most resume dishonesty happens, so it is worth being precise.

SAG-AFTRA's Television Agreement does not have a "co-star" contract. It has employment categories: day performer, three-day performer, weekly performer, and series regular, along with major role performer designations. The words on your resume are the industry's shorthand for how a role sat in the show, and they correlate loosely with those contracts.

The honest rule: name the credit the way the production named it. If you were a day player with two lines, that is a co-star, and calling it a guest star is the most commonly caught lie in the business. Casting offices know their own shows. Directors remember their own sets. On a film, "Lead" means the story is about your character; "Supporting" means it is not.

Do not invent middle terms. "Featured" is not a screen credit, it is what background work is sometimes called, and putting it on a resume tells everyone you did background work and hoped it would read as more.

What does a beginner with no credits put on a resume?

Training, real performance experience, and skills, in that order, with nothing invented.

• Training goes to the top, right under stats, where credits would otherwise be. List the school or teacher, the class, and the dates. A serious run at a scene study or on-camera program is genuine information about you. Our sister directory covers the Los Angeles schools and the techniques they teach if you are choosing where to start.
• Student films and new media count. Title, role type, director, school. They are real productions and everyone knows what they are.
• Theater counts, including college and community productions when they are all you have. Role name, theater, director.
• Related performance work counts where it is honest: improv team runs, stand-up, live sketch, voiceover, professional dance or music.
• Extra work does not count. Do not list background work as a credit under any label. Casting people can tell, it signals inexperience faster than a blank section would, and a short honest resume outperforms a padded one.

An empty film section is normal at the start. It is not a problem to solve with fiction.

Which special skills actually get used?

The ones that are true at a professional level and that a production would hire for. Special skills is the section casting genuinely scans, because it answers real breakdown requirements: a role needs someone who can ride, swim, drive stick, speak Spanish, or play the fiddle on camera.

What gets used in Los Angeles, roughly:

• Languages, with an honest fluency label (fluent, conversational, native). This is the highest-value line on the section.
• Accents and dialects, listed only if you can hold them under audition pressure.
• Driving: manual transmission, motorcycle license. Genuinely gets booked.
• Athletics at a real level: horseback (list the discipline), swimming, martial arts (list the style and rank), boxing, skateboarding, gymnastics.
• Music: instruments with proficiency, vocal range and type.
• Dance: styles and years.
• Stage combat, with certification if you have it.
• Professional or technical backgrounds: nursing, law enforcement, bartending, sign language, teaching. These read as authenticity for the roles they match.
• Union and licensing facts: valid passport, valid driver's license, SAG-AFTRA eligible.

What to cut: anything you would be humiliated to demonstrate in a room. The rule is literal, because you will be asked. Do not list "yoga" or "good listener." Do not list a language you took two semesters of. One casting person asking you to say a sentence in the language you claimed is enough to end a meeting.

How is a casting-site profile different from a PDF?

They hold the same facts in different containers, and you maintain both.

On Actors Access, the resume is structured data. You enter credits into fields and the platform renders a formatted resume, which means it is always current and always attached to your submissions along with your photos and media. Your union status, stats, sizes and special skills live in separate fields that feed the searches casting runs. Fill every field: a blank skill field cannot be searched, and searchability is the whole point of the platform.

The PDF is what you email, hand to a director, and staple to a print. It is what a rep forwards. It is one page and it is the version you control the design of. Export at 8x10.

Keep them synchronized. The most common self-inflicted wound is an Actors Access profile updated after every booking and a PDF from two years ago living in the resume folder that gets sent to an agent.

Your resume, headshot and reel are one package and have to describe the same person. If the resume says "series regular" and the reel has no television on it, the mismatch is the message.

What lies actually get caught?

Almost all of them, and faster than actors expect, because Los Angeles is a small industry with a searchable memory.

• Upgrading a credit. Calling a co-star a guest star, or a supporting role a lead. Caught by anyone who worked the show, and IMDb billing order is public.
• Listing a project you auditioned for but did not book. Caught immediately and it ends the relationship.
• Listing background work as a speaking role. Caught by call sheets, vouchers and by the fact that the story does not survive one follow-up question.
• Claiming a teacher you took one weekend intensive with as ongoing training. Los Angeles teachers talk to each other and to casting.
• Skills you cannot perform. Caught in the room, on the day, in front of everyone.
• Union status you do not hold. SAG-AFTRA eligibility is a factual state that comes from covered employment (one day in a principal or speaking role, or three days of covered background work) and can be verified. The national initiation fee is $3,000 as of July 2026, so "eligible" and "member" are financially and factually different claims. Do not blur them.

The reason to be exact is not moral, it is practical. A resume's only function is to make a stranger trust you enough to spend an hour on you. One caught inflation costs you every credit on the page.

I have photographed a lot of actors right after they got the meeting and a lot right after they lost it. The ones who lost it almost never lost it on talent. They lost it on a small inflation that unraveled in conversation. A thin honest resume is a starting point. A padded one is a liability you carry into every room. - Joshua Michael Shelton, editor