One of the most important things for an actor to understand, especially early in your career, is that it is not your agent's job to get you auditions. Once you really get that and start doing your share of the work, you've put yourself on the path to building the career you want.
But let's be honest. That probably leaves you thinking, "okay, so if it's not my agent's job to get me auditions, what IS their job?" Sure, we know generally that their job is to negotiate the deal when you book work, but given that so many jobs pay scale and seem to involve little negotiating, what are we paying 10% for?
First of all, negotiations involve more than pay. There are issues like how you're credited, your work schedule, and any number of other things that may be part of the dealmaking process. But even that isn't really what we pay them for. We pay them to represent our interests when there's a conflict between the needs of the project and the needs of the actor. What does that look like? Here are three examples from my own career:
- I am currently very fortunate to have recurring roles on several projects. But before I booked any of them, I made vacation plans. (You know what they say... if you want to book a job, buy non-refundable plane tickets.) My agent let production know about the trip as soon as I booked the job, and made sure they knew I would make any changes necessary to accommodate the shooting schedule. When we found out I would be in the episode that shot during my trip dates, we crossed our fingers, hoping the two wouldn't conflict. At first it looked perfect - I was scheduled to shoot the day after I got back. But then we learned I was scheduled for another day, smack in the middle of my trip. When I read the script, I saw that the shot I was scheduled to be in that day involved me walking past a door... No lines, no other action. So I decided to do something I'd never done before. I called my agent and asked her to find out if there was any way around it. She went back and forth with production, making sure they knew that I would absolutely come back if there was no alternative, but doing her best to make sure I didn't go through the stress and expense of rescheduling everything unnecessarily. In the end, production said it was fine for me to go on the trip as planned, and we were able to shoot that moment on the same day as the rest of my work in that episode.
- While on said vacation, I got an email from my agent informing me that I was being brought back to a show I shot last year. Hooray! Unfortunately, the dates for this new job conflicted with the day I was already scheduled to work on the show I just mentioned. Uh oh. But my agent worked it out so I could do both. So while I was enjoying some much-needed time off, she was hard at work on my behalf, smoothing out conflicts so I could come back to not just one job, but two.
- Rewind to a year ago. I booked a recurring role on a show I'd gone in for lots of times, and was breaking for lunch on my first day on set when I got a call from my agent. I'd been booked for a week, but it turned out they only needed me for a day, and wanted to know if they could redo my paperwork to reflect the (much) lower pay rate. I could say no, as everything had already been signed, but production was asking for a favor. It was a tough spot to be in, as I didn't want to feel taken advantage of, but I also didn't want to stick it to people who had done so much to get me on the show. So I asked my agent to agree to the change, on the condition that they paid me enough to establish a new daily quote. Production agreed, and an icky situation was resolved to everyone's satisfaction.
Those are just a few examples of the kinds of things agents do above and beyond the initial deal negotiation, and having nothing to do with getting clients auditions, that more than justify their 10% commission. And the further our careers advance, the more often those situations will happen and the sticker they'll be, making it all the more important to have representation you can trust.
If you're thinking that all sounds fine and dandy for me, but isn't really relevant to where you're at in your career, go back to the link at the top of this post. Understanding what your agent's job is (and isn't) is key to taking your career to the next level. It is OUR job to get our careers to a place where our agents can do what we pay them for. And if I can do it, so can you.