Look, I love your agent. I really really do. Your manager too. Great people. Absolutely amazing, wonderful folks who pitch you like the star that you are and negotiate fantastic deals for you. But sometimes I can’t reach your agent. I may have details for you that get miscommunicated by going through your manager’s filter first. It’s not that anyone on your team intends for you to get wrong information, it’s just that your agent probably represents another hundred or so actors, your manager likely has another twenty clients, and with thousands of roles coming across their desks through the breakdowns, my little “detail” may slip through the cracks.

And it could be such an important piece of information that it would make the difference between your winning the role and never even getting a callback.

I was casting a feature film earlier this year in which the writer and director chose to share some key information about the two lead characters with every actor coming to callbacks. They wrote a very long email about these characters’ backstories and their personal motivations and objectives in each scene. They provided significant information about the choices they’d like to see actors make at final callbacks. My mission was to get this extremely valuable information to the actors chosen for callbacks.

Any of the actors who self-submitted, no problem. I already had a direct line of communication open with these folks, due to the fact that we’d done the schedule through Actors Access and Breakdown Express. I could copy-and-paste this lengthy email into the C-Mail feature and that was that!

I found an issue, however, in getting that same information to actors whose agents and managers did the submitting. Sure, I used the same C-Mail feature, but this time I was sending lengthy craft-level notes (notes that would likely appear valuable to the actor) to people whose job is to be concerned with the where, when, and what of the audition. I could hope that each agent and manager would forward the information verbatim to the actors auditioning, but there’s no way to know for sure whether that would happen.

In fact, I learned that it didn’t happen. Quite a bit.

One actor showed up to final callbacks 20 minutes late, stating she’d just been given the callback information from her manager. Of course, I had notified the manager electronically (the same way the manager had submitted her, received information about the preread, and got notification of the first callback the week before) and, since we’d had no issue with electronic communication previously, there was no reason to assume something would go wrong this time.

Sure enough, for whatever reason, the manager didn’t check her C-Mail for days and the notification, the notes from the director and writer of this film, and other important information for the actor did not get passed on to the actor until the day of final callbacks. How on Earth could she benefit from all of that wonderful, rich, actor-prep information when she didn’t receive it the week before, when it was sent out?

Remember, by the time this was happening, I’d already met the actor twice (at prereads and first callbacks), so I had her hardcopy headshot and resumé, along with all of my notes about her work. Did I check her resumé for personal contact information, when I knew the writer and director had such essential character notes to share? Of course. And on her resumé? Logos and phone numbers for those who represent her. Now, I know that some agents and managers have a policy against actors including their own contact numbers on their resumés. Fine. How about your email address? How about the URL for your actor website? At the very least, I can visit your website, get to the CONTACT page, and then send a note to you from there, with all of the delicious details you crave but that your rep may blow off.

I’ll never forget the last-minute-replacement actor we were trying to get on a plane to meet the rest of the cast at the set after the shoot had begun. Manager? Out of the country. Agent? Unreachable. Emergency cell phone numbers they each had on their outgoing answering machines? Got us nowhere. What actor got the job? The one whose cell phone number was on his resumé. We needed to make something happen immediately. There was no time for waiting for calls back from the number one actor’s rep. We had to get the number two actor on the plane. And we could. Good for him. By being reachable, he got to work on a SAG film for a week. Paid.

Let me assure you: it’s not about casting trying to circumvent the system. We’re not trying to be shady, going around your agent or manager to “get to you.” We’re often attempting to get information to you that could make the difference in booking the gig. Communication is our goal. That actor we were able to get on a plane with hours’ notice had an agent and manager too, and we were able to arrange all of the appropriate contracts the next day. No one was left out of the loop. No one missed out on a commission check. An actor got work because he was reachable, plain and simple.

Remember, you signed with your agent for many reasons, most of which have to do with his or her ability to get you seen by casting directors whose doors may have been closed to you before, to negotiate better billing, to get you working at a higher quote, and to score a larger dressing room. You signed with your manager for the personal touch, the informed career guidance, advice on determining your type, help with finding the best classes, and an extra boost in meeting with agents at a higher tier when the time is right. You however are a gifted performer with the talent to bring a role to life. You are the one whose schedule has to click in order to get to set, last-minute. You should be in charge of what to do with information that a casting director may be trying to get to you. Help us help you! We are all here with the same goal: get the actors prepped, get the roles cast, get the actors to set.

Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!

Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/000299.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.