How to Actually Get an Acting Agent

Diana Horner spent over 30 years working as a talent agent herself — part of a 35-year career in the industry that also included work as a model, actress, manager, casting assistant, and director/producer — and has since coached talent all over the world alongside agents in the industry. Her perspective on what actually gets a performer signed comes from both sides of the table.

What an agent sees when they look at you

An agent only makes money when a performer books a job and gets paid — they take a percentage of that booking. So from the moment they look at a new performer, they're really asking one question: is this person ready to work? If the answer is no, there's no reason to sign them yet, because an unprepared performer isn't going to book anything either of them gets paid for.

The two things every agent wants to see

A professional headshot — the kind covered in our first post in this series: LA-style, simple, uncluttered, eyes leading the shot.

An actor's resume that shows real preparation. Diana draws a direct comparison between two examples: one young performer who's just starting out, with training but no credits yet — which she's clear is a totally fine place to start — versus a performer with both training and real experience: theatre work and a couple of commercials, meaning actual on-camera credits. The second resume is simply more marketable, because it shows an agent tangible proof of readiness, not just potential.

Training comes before everything else

The throughline of this whole series holds here too: training and coaching is something a performer (or their parent) pays for directly — nobody else covers it. Diana compares it to any other serious extracurricular a family invests in: dance classes, music lessons, soccer, karate. The difference with acting training specifically is that, done seriously, it can lead to an actual career and real income — which is exactly why an agent treats "has this person trained" as the first filter before anything else.

Where to actually start

Her recommendation is direct: start in real acting classes. Training through an LA-based system — even for a performer training and working outside LA — matters because it prepares a performer for both their local market and the LA market, which she notes is where the industry's biggest opportunities eventually are.