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.

New Faces Skyrockets Model and Actor Careers

Modeling and acting are two of the toughest yet truly exciting jobs in this world. And once you have established a name in the modeling or entertainment industry, the world could be yours for the taking.

It’s no wonder why so many people dream of becoming a model or an actor. And it’s definitely no mystery why model and actor portfolio sites have popped up everywhere. Talent online portfolio sites did not just grow on trees, though, metaphorically speaking. It all started with one particular website.

The very first (and most respected) model and actor portfolio service in the history of the worldwide web is New Faces. New Faces literally started it all – in 1995, supermodel Hilary Rowland (one of today’s hottest female CEOs), launched New Faces. Hilary taught herself HTML and web design and had gone through many trial and error phases. When she finally got the website done at the age of 15, she launched the very first online portfolio service in the world. It is a website where models and actors can create their own portfolios for free and where they can get booked, apply to casting calls or hired by talent scouts.

New Faces helps aspiring models and actors to get discovered by talent or modeling agencies. For more than 15 years, this site has been used by the most noteworthy photographers, agents and casting directors. These professionals aren’t in New Faces for nothing – they’re there to look for new models/talents by browsing through members’ portfolios.