How Do Talent Agencies Work?

Talent Agencies are businesses that help talented people find work and maybe become well-known in the world of fashion, commercial advertising, modeling, stage theater, TV and entertainment as a whole.

What is a talent agent's job?

A talent agent's job is to represent their talents and find jobs for them. Usually, they get you into auditions or mail out your headshots to casting directors so that you can book a job.

Other times, casting directors and other business clients go to talent agencies to look for models, actors, personalities, etc to represent or endorse their products.

Talent agents/ agencies have 2 clients, and that is you (the actor or talent) and they (the casting directors, companies, businesses, advertising agencies looking for talents to sell/represent/endorse their products through commercial ads).

How do talent agencies earn money?

Most of the time, talent agencies/ agents get 10% to 15% of their talent's earnings. So for example, an actor gets $900 from doing a commercial ad, you multiply that by 0.10, the result is 90. In short, the agent gets $90 from an actor's 900-dollar project or job (if the agency charges 10% commission).

Talent agencies must be licensed to operate. Licensure is important in order to protect actors' rights - scam agencies tend to over-charge their talents for doing jobs - and the rights of the talent agency itself.

Who knows who ...


You stand a very good chance of finding representation if you actually know someone who knows a talent agent. Most of the time, talent agents don't just agree to see an aspiring actor unless he has already done lots of acting work in the past. However, talent agencies value recommendations very much, especially if it is from the people they know or trust. So for example, a photographer who took your headshot thinks you have great potential and knows someone from a talent agency, you can ask him to recommend you or introduce you. Networking and connections is highly valuable in this business.

Despite the tough competition, you must really keep trying in this business. Most successful artists and actors of today never succeeded in their first tries. Most of them had to mail out hundreds of headshots to talent agencies before they could actually get represented. So don't you ever give up, especially if you think that this business is really where you ought to be.