Our Professionals

Commercial Acting

You can start acting in commercials today with companies like Sony, McDonald’s and Kellogg’s looking for new talent every day.

It may sound a little strange, but all actors can be generally sorted into a type or character type. Type is usually judged by a person's look, personality or uniqueness that sets them apart from the next actor in line. With commercial acting you will see type play a huge factor because this type of acting has you selling a product rather than yourself. Oddly enough, commercial acting is not really about skill but how well you can fit into a niche. It can be alot easier to get your start in acting as a commercial actor because the job opportunities are numerous in comparison to other types of acting. There are even more opportunities for those who have a really unique look. You may find that there are a lot of roles that you don’t even have to worry about memorizing lines for, you just have to make the right expressions, maybe dance or simply just smile and hold the product.

Commercial acting does depend a lot on current trends and interests; which means that it is constantly changing and evolving. These jobs typically don’t take much time to perform and this can make the possibilities in this type of acting endless. Most commercial shoots usually only take two days and average pay ranges to about $2,000 when you add residuals on. Most don’t realize that everytime a commercial gets aired, the actor gets paid what they call in the business residual payments. These types of payments may be a good bit of income. That just depends on how long the commercial is run.

You don’t even need to live in a big city like Los Angeles or New York to get work in commercial acting, you can find work in pretty much any city around the country. Granted local commercials don’t pay nearly as well as commercials that are aired nationally. Though it can be a great chance to gain experience despite that and add it to your resume before you take the leap and get a bigger job. A lot of successful actors started in commercial acting before they got roles in television or film.

Taking acting classes can improve your chances of booking commercials, just take classes that specialize in commercial acting. Even though you may not need to memorize lines for this type of acting, you do have to learn how to portray many different emotions and be able to take direction from the director. Taking an acting class will teach you the methods to help you succeed in those areas and with good training getting a good commercial acting gig will be a lot easier and help you prepare yourself for auditions.

You have to keep in mind that there may be hundreds of actors that are auditioning for the same commercial, they also may not approach that audition with the same professionalism that they would a movie audition. This can be a huge mistake; booking at least one commercial may mean that you have yourself set up to live while doing other projects and auditioning for other parts for a whole year. Not to mention that you are still gaining experience auditioning that is very valuable to your career. No matter what type of audition you are going to, you should always strive to be professional and be patient. You should audition for as many commercial acting jobs as you can muster, eventually you will find a role that suits you and you will gain much experience that you can use later on.