Ever since I moved to LA, I’ve always been told never to put your phone number on your resume.
I could totally understand part of the logic. You don’t want your number to fall into the hands of some deranged whacko. There are thousands of stories of headshots ending up in strange places. Back in 2003, a casting director was found to have sold “left over” women’s headshots on EBay (you can read about it here). Even today on EBay, I found this auction – click here. It’s crazy.
I could even understand it from my agents point of view – they don’t want casting directors to call you directly. It could take away part of their income and you could potentially lose money if you negotiate with them for a booked job. Of course, they tell you the latter. It’s really all about the money they are losing!
So, I kept it off. Until I took a workshop with a popular casting director.
At the end of the class, someone had asked if we should put our contact information on our resumes.
“Of course!”, he said. “You’re stupid if you don’t. What if you leave your agent and we have an audition for you. We don’t want to search all over the place for your number. If that happens, you won’t get a call. It just makes it too difficult.”
He added, “And there have been many times where I’ve called up an agent for a last minute audition only to get their machine. If that actor doesn’t have any sort of contact information then it’s onto the next headshot. You miss out again.”
And the last bit of wisdom he said, “If your agent doesn’t want you to put your number on there just make up two separate resumes. One you give to your agent and one you give to me.”
With that new bit of information, I went home and re-did my resume – one for my agent and one for casting directors.
Oh, and one more thing: About a year after that workshop, I did get a last minute audition where the casting director called me directly. Why? Cause he got my agents machine.
Always leave a trail for them to find you!
