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Actors sometimes have teams of professionals who guide and influence their careers. Talent mangers often play a crucial role in this effort, encouraging career development and helping clients make valuable connections in the entertainment industry. This is often a long-term relationship, so it’s important to choose someone with a solid reputation and with whom you have rapport.

Being a working actor requires more than skill and talent. Successful actors market themselves effectively so they can land roles and get casting directors familiar with their body of work. To join these ranks, develop a marketing plan that includes such standards as excellent headshots and a resume -- along with more creative options like postcards and show invitations.

A portfolio is the actor’s version of a resume and shares many resume characteristics. Although some of the standard rules for resumes -- such as always be honest -- also apply to an actor’s portfolio, a portfolio has some other additions unique to the field. Make your portfolio a memorable reflection of your skills, talent and experience.

Becoming an actor in Australia is a challenging task that requires relentless determination, professional training without the promise of success and a strong resilience to face the inevitable and constant rejection.

Consider why you want to be an actor because you have to be serious and driven to enter a profession that is unpredictable, fiercely competitive, superficial and judgmental. Few make it as actors, and those who do, are out of work 85 percent of their working lives.

Actors inhabit a wide range of roles and the best actors can bring the most believability to those often incredibly different roles. One of the most important cues to the audience of character is the voice. To properly embody a wide range of characters, the actor must have a flexible voice. Compound this with the necessity to project vocal nuances in live performances so the entire audience can hear, and it becomes clear that voice training is one of an actor's most important practices.