What a Real Acting Résumé Looks Like — And What a Bad One Looks Like
Here are two acting résumés. Same actor, same career, same credits. The first one is correct. The second one is a disaster, and it is a disaster in fourteen specific, nameable ways — every one of which we have seen a real beginner make. If you read only one chapter of this section, read this one, because everything else can be reverse-engineered from these two documents.
Jordan Reeves is invented. He does not exist, his credits do not exist, and that is deliberate — an example résumé built from a real actor’s career teaches you their career, not the document.
What is not invented is every rule the good version follows and every rule the bad version breaks. Each one is sourced, below, to a named casting director, agent or working studio.
The good one
JORDAN REEVES
Non-Union
jordan.reeves.actor@[domain] · +44 7700 900xxx
www.jordanreeves.[domain]
Height: 5'8" Hair: Dark Brown Eyes: Hazel
Playing Age: 24–32 Based: London / Manchester
FILM
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THE LONG WEEKEND * Supporting dir. Aisling Kavanagh
Cormorant Pictures
HOLD THE LINE Lead dir. Femi Adeyemi
Northern Film School
SALT AND SAND Supporting dir. Priya Raghunathan
Ravensbourne Shorts
DAYLIGHT ROBBERY Featured dir. Tom Vance
Sixteen Frames
TELEVISION
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CASUALTY WARD Co-Star BBC Studios / dir. Lena Okafor
THE MERSEY LINE Co-Star Red Kite Television
THEATRE
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HAMLET Laertes Bridgewater Playhouse
dir. Rebecca Sallow
A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE Rodolpho Salford Rep
dir. Callum Ives
THE CRUCIBLE John Proctor Royal Central School of
Speech and Drama
dir. Marianne Doust
LOVE AND INFORMATION Ensemble Bridgewater Playhouse
dir. Rebecca Sallow
Additional theatre credits available upon request.
COMMERCIAL
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Conflicts available upon request.
TRAINING
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BA (Hons) Acting Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
Meisner Technique Delia Moncrieff — The Actors Rooms, London
(ongoing)
On-Camera Technique Ray Ellis — Northern Screen Studio, Manchester
Stage Combat BADC — Advanced, Unarmed & Rapier/Dagger
Accent & Dialect Nadia Brandt — private coaching
SPECIAL SKILLS
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ACCENTS: RP*, General American, Standard Scottish, Manchester (native*),
Northern Irish, New York
LANGUAGES: French (conversational)
COMBAT: Stage combat — BADC Advanced (Unarmed, Rapier & Dagger)
PHYSICAL: Horse riding (English, jumping — 6 yrs) · Competitive swimming
(county level) · Roller skates · Football (left-footed)
MUSIC: Guitar (intermediate) · Baritone, can sight-read
PRACTICAL: Full clean UK driving licence — MANUAL · Valid UK & US passports ·
Enhanced DBS certificate (current) · Can cry on cue
* = native / performed on stage
* THE LONG WEEKEND — Official Selection, Manchester Short Film Festival 2025The bad one — same actor, same career
Nothing has been added. Nothing has been taken away. This is the identical career, written by someone who has read a résumé-builder blog and nothing else.
Jordan Reeves
17 Wellfield Road, Chorlton, Manchester M21 xxx
DOB: 14 March 1998 (age 28)
jordanreeves1998@[domain]
Weight: 11st 4lb
OBJECTIVE
To obtain a challenging and rewarding role in film, television or theatre
where I can utilise my passion for storytelling and grow as a performer
within a dynamic and collaborative creative environment.
ACTING EXPERIENCE
2015 Bugsy Malone — Fat Sam — St. Bede’s High School
2017 Guys and Dolls — Ensemble — Chorlton Amateur Operatic Society
2019 The Crucible — John Proctor — Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
2021 Featured Extra — MARVEL FEATURE FILM (Untitled) — Marvel Studios
2022 Hold the Line — Marcus — Northern Film School
2023 Casualty Ward — Dave the Paramedic — BBC
2024 Hamlet — Laertes — Bridgewater Playhouse
2025 The Long Weekend — Supporting — Cormorant Pictures
─────────────────────────── page 2 ───────────────────────────
COMMERCIALS
Coca-Cola (national) · Vodafone (regional) · Barclays (online)
SKILLS & INTERESTS
Reading · Travelling · Watching films · Team player · Good listener ·
Microsoft Office · Photoshop · Fluent French · Horse riding ·
Accents (all) · Driving
References available upon request.
Photo attached. [ a phone selfie, pasted at 72dpi, squashed ]- Comic Sans, and the name is barely larger than the body text — Backstage UK: “a misjudged font could mean someone thinks you’re sloppy or lazy.”
- The full home address, printed on a document that gets photocopied, handed round and left on tables.
- Date of birth and real age — you have just excluded yourself from every role you could plausibly play but do not literally match.
- The birth year is hidden inside the email address, which is the leak almost nobody thinks about.
- An objective statement — corporate CV logic, and it appears in no acting source we could find anywhere.
- Film, TV, theatre, school shows and extra work all merged into one category. Marci Liroff: “Don’t bunch different categories together.”
- The oldest, weakest credit — a school play from 2015 — sits in the top slot, with the year printed next to it.
- “FEATURED EXTRA” in a Marvel film. This is background work relabelled to sound like a credit, and it is the single worst line on the page.
- Character names on screen credits — “Marcus,” “Dave the Paramedic.” Nobody knows who Marcus is. Those should read “Lead” and “Co-Star.”
- Two pages. Backstage UK: “When your CV runs to more than a page, you’re the only person looking at page two.”
- The commercial brands are named — and every single one is now a conflict that silently disqualifies him from competing spots.
- Special skills with no levels, hobbies mixed in, corporate software listed, and “Accents (all),” which is not a thing.
- “Fluent French” with nothing to back it — they will simply speak French to you.
- “References available upon request” — never. And the photo is a 72dpi phone selfie, which is the actual error here, not the presence of a photo.
The worst line on the page
2021 — Featured Extra — MARVEL FEATURE FILM (Untitled) — Marvel Studios.
Of the fourteen errors on that document, this is the one that does the most damage, and it is the one beginners are most drawn to, because it has the most famous word on the page in it.
And in the UK it does not even count as a credit: Spotlight’s joining criteria list “Extra/Supporting Artist work” under the things they explicitly do not accept, alongside stunt credits and amateur work. That is not advice. That is a gate. Chapter IV takes this apart properly, including the casting director who dissents — because one does, and her dissent is interesting.
The silent career-killer: naming the brands
This one is not obvious and it costs actors work without them ever finding out. Jordan proudly lists Coca-Cola, Vodafone and Barclays. He thinks he is showing range and national exposure.
What he has actually done is hand every commercial casting office in the country a reason to cross him off. A conflict is a commercial you have running for a product that bars you from a competitor’s spot in the same category. A casting office looking for a Pepsi ad cannot tell whether that Coke commercial ran last week or six years ago — and they will not spend the time finding out. They move on. Nobody tells him. He never knows.
The standing convention is the single most professional line on the good version: “Conflicts available upon request.” Marci Liroff: “Do you have conflicts coming up? Write that they’re available upon request.”
If you are starting out and genuinely need the commercial work on the page to fill space, Acting Studio Chicago offers a way through: list the ad agency, the role and the production company or director — and never the product. You get the credit’s weight without the conflict’s cost. And one honest note: Backstage’s own template contradicts Backstage’s own advice here, inviting you to name the brand in a column marked “Brand.” Two pages on the same site, opposite instructions. It is a very good demonstration of why you should not trust a template you have not thought about.
The error that is not an error
Look again at the last line of the bad résumé: Photo attached.
You will read all over the internet that a photo on an acting résumé is amateur-hour. That is wrong, and we are not going to repeat it just because it sounds authoritative. Acting Studio Chicago actively recommends a thumbnail headshot: “one more opportunity to put a face to your name. Helpful in case your headshot and resume ever get separated.” Backstage UK puts a thumbnail top-right as standard on the British CV.
The error is the bad photo — a squashed 72dpi selfie. And there is a clean resolution nobody states, so we will: a thumbnail is correct on any résumé that travels alone — an emailed PDF, a UK CV, anything not physically married to a photograph. It is redundant on a hard copy that is already stapled to an 8x10 of your face. Chapter XI.
What the good one is actually doing
Read the correct version again with these in mind. Every choice on it is load-bearing.
Column two splits by medium. Supporting, Lead, Co-Star, Featured for screen. Laertes, Rodolpho, John Proctor for stage. Everyone knows how big Laertes is; nobody knows who Marcus is. Chapter VI.
The student film names the school as the production company. Northern Film School is a credential; “Student Film” as a bare phrase is not.
The asterisk-and-footnote for the festival selection. Two independent sources — Marci Liroff and coach Joseph Pearlman — describe exactly this mechanism. It is the correct way to flag a good short film without cluttering the table.
The drama school is named in full, once. Not hidden, not padded — labelled and moved past. Everybody did college shows. It costs you nothing.
French is “conversational,” not “fluent.” That single word is the honesty test of the whole document, and it will be tested the moment somebody in the room speaks French to you.
MANUAL is in capitals. Because driving a stick shift genuinely books work, and because “Driving” on its own tells a casting director nothing at all.
“Can cry on cue” is the one odd line — and it is a skill, not a preference. That distinction is the entire difference between a conversation-starter and a hobby, and it is the fine line Chapter V walks.
One page. No objective. No references. No lies. It took about forty minutes and it will work for two years.
Want Will to Coach You Through It?
Reading is one thing. Working 1-on-1 with a working actor who booked Oppenheimer is another.