The Free Acting Résumé Template — Download It, Fill It In, Done
This is the acting résumé template, free, in the two formats actors actually use. It is also printed in full on this page, blank and filled in, so you can read it without downloading anything. Below both, we go through every box and tell you exactly what goes in it — and the one thing about file formats that trips up almost every beginner.
There is no gate here you cannot walk around. Take the file, or read the template on the page and rebuild it yourself in ten minutes. Both work. Backstage gives its own templates away on public Google Docs links with no email required, and anyone charging you for this is selling you something the industry hands out free.
The blank template, on the page
A downloadable file is invisible until you open it. So here is the whole thing as text — every field, labelled and empty, so you can see the shape of the document before you commit to anything.
[ YOUR NAME ]
[ Union status — or “Non-Union” ]
[ email ] · [ phone, with country code ]
[ website or reel link ]
Height: [ ] Hair: [ ] Eyes: [ ]
Playing Age: [ – ] Based: [ ]
FILM
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ TITLE ] [ Role TYPE ] dir. [ Director ]
[ Production company ]
[ TITLE ] [ Role TYPE ] dir. [ Director ]
[ Production company ]
TELEVISION
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ TITLE ] [ Role TYPE ] [ Network / Production co ]
THEATRE
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ TITLE ] [ CHARACTER ] [ Theatre ]
dir. [ Director ]
[ Additional theatre credits available upon request. ]
COMMERCIAL
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Conflicts available upon request.
TRAINING
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ Course / degree ] [ School or studio ]
[ Discipline ] [ Teacher ] — [ Studio ] [ (ongoing) ]
SPECIAL SKILLS
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
ACCENTS: [ list — asterisk your native one ]
LANGUAGES: [ language ( conversational / fluent ) ]
COMBAT: [ discipline, awarding body, level ]
PHYSICAL: [ skill ( level, years ) ]
MUSIC: [ instrument ( level ) · voice type ]
PRACTICAL: [ driving licence — MANUAL? · passports · certificates ]
* [ footnote: festival selection, award, nomination ]Look at column two. Role TYPE for film and television. CHARACTER for theatre. That split is not a stylistic choice — it is encoded in Backstage’s own official template, and it is the single fastest way to spot a résumé built by someone who has never seen a real one. Chapter VI is the whole argument.
The same template, filled in
This is our worked-example actor, Jordan Reeves. He does not exist. Every credit, theatre, director and teacher below is invented — which is the point, because you should never be looking at a template built from a real actor’s career.
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
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
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
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
CASUALTY WARD Co-Star BBC Studios / dir. Lena Okafor
THE MERSEY LINE Co-Star Red Kite Television
THEATRE
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
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
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Conflicts available upon request.
TRAINING
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
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
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
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 2025Box by box: what actually goes in each one
Name. Top, centred, the largest thing on the page. No source anywhere specifies a point size, so ignore anyone who tells you 22pt is a rule — make it obviously bigger than everything else and stop worrying.
Union status. State it, honestly, including “Non-Union.” This is one of the very few lines on the document where lying has contractual consequences rather than reputational ones — producers must budget differently, and a non-union project legally cannot hire a union actor.
Contact. Email, phone with a country code, a website or reel link if you have one. Never your home address. This page gets printed, photocopied and left on tables.
Stats. Height, and then a live argument — see Chapter VII. Playing age, not real age. Base location, which matters more than actors think if you can self-tape from two cities.
Credits. Separated by medium, never merged. Marci Liroff, casting director: “Don’t bunch different categories together for your acting credits.” Delete any heading you have no credits under — an empty “FILM” with nothing beneath it is worse than no film section.
Training. Names of teachers, names of studios. Mark ongoing courses as ongoing. This is the section a beginner leans on hardest, and Chapter IV explains why — and flags the conflict of interest in everyone who tells you so.
Special skills. With levels. Always with levels. “Horse riding (English, jumping — 6 yrs)” is a skill. “Horse riding” is a liability, and Chapter V has the story of the actor it happened to.
This is the most useful practical thing on the page and almost nobody says it out loud. The .docx is your working file. The thing you actually send anyone is always a PDF. Backstage UK, on why: “When you send a Word file (or equivalent) you risk losing the formatting of your document and a casting director opening something impossible to read. PDFs can be opened on most devices easily, don’t change when opened with different software, and also can’t be edited.” A .docx that looked perfect on your laptop can arrive at a casting office with the columns collapsed into porridge. Export. Every time.
Tabs, not spaces
Small, boring, and it is the difference between a document that looks made and a document that looks typed. From Backstage’s own musical theatre guidance: “When separating your columns, don’t use spaces. Tabs ensure that each item lines up vertically.”
If you have ever opened a résumé and watched the third column stagger down the page like a drunk, that is spaces. A casting director’s eye slides straight off a misaligned table. Set your tab stops once and every credit lands in the same place forever.
And name the file like an adult. There is no governing body here and both conventions are in circulation — SURNAME_Firstname_Resume.pdf in the US, and Backstage UK suggests your name, the date, and “acting CV.” What is not in dispute is the failure mode: a file called resume_FINAL_v3 (2).docx tells a casting office you have never done this before, and it does it before anyone has read a word.
What this template deliberately does not have
No objective. No personal profile. No “references available upon request.” No date of birth or graduation years. No hobbies. No decorative font, no colour blocks, no infographic skill bars showing that you are 84% Acting.
It also has no weight, and that is a deliberate choice we are telling you about rather than hiding. Backstage still says list it. Acting Studio Chicago says optional. A Halifax artistic director called the whole convention archaic. We show it omitted, we tell you it is contested, and you may put it back. That is what an honest template does — it takes a side and shows you the seam.
Two things this template will not do for you
One: it is a convention, not a standard. There is no governing body, no certification, no committee. Three or four columns are both correct. Strongest-credit-first and newest-first are both defended by serious people. Anyone selling you “the one industry-standard acting résumé format” is selling you a blog post with a price tag.
Two: it cannot fill itself in. The document is one page of facts you already possess, which is precisely why we could not find a single reputable acting-industry source that recommends paying anyone to write your acting résumé. Not one. Generic résumé-writing services run from $50 to $5,000-plus. The industry’s own trade publication gives its templates away free. Draw the obvious conclusion.
Now go and see what a finished one looks like next to a bad one — fourteen errors, all of them ones we have watched real beginners make.
Want Will to Coach You Through It?
Reading is one thing. Working 1-on-1 with a working actor who booked Oppenheimer is another.