Acting Headshots: How to Prepare, What to Wear, and What to Order

You've just booked your first headshot session, you've paid the deposit, and then you spend three weeks quietly panicking about what shirt to wear.

That's the actual experience of my first headshot. The photography is the one part you're not responsible for — everything else is on you, and almost nobody explains it before you're standing in front of a light. I've had my own taken, and I've been on the other side of the casting table with a stack of them. Here's my best advice on how to prep for your headshots.

What is an acting headshot, exactly?

An acting headshot is a color photograph of your face and upper chest, shot vertically, that casting uses to decide whether to see you. It is not a portrait and not a glamour shot. Its whole job is to look exactly like the person who walks into the room.

Every other rule descends from that sentence. A photo that flatters you into someone else has failed, however beautiful it is — the moment you walk in looking different from your picture, the audition starts from behind.

Two conventions get muddled by advice that has outlived its own accuracy:

• Color, not black and white. Black-and-white headshots were standard decades ago. Not now.
• Vertical, not horizontal. The reason is mechanical: your resume goes on the back of the headshot, and a vertical photo is the one a casting director can flip over and read without turning it sideways.

How does a headshot session actually work?

Five stages. You book and pay, you shoot, you review proofs, you choose a few images for retouching, and you receive files. The photography is the short part — the choosing is where people get stuck, and it's the part nobody warns you about.

Here is the thing I'd want to know before booking anything: the session fee is usually not the whole price. Retouching is very often billed per image, separately, which is how a "good deal for headshots" can turn into an expensive one. So I'd email three questions before paying a deposit:

• What does the session fee include?
• How many finished images come with it, and what does each extra one cost?
• How tight do you crop?

Those three answers tell you what to budget, how many images to plan for, and what to pack. A photographer who answers them cleanly is telling you something good about the rest of the experience. That third question looks like an odd one — it is the most useful in this whole post, and I'll come back to it.

What should you wear?

Bring two or three tops per look, in solid colors, in shapes that fit close enough to show your frame. Then iron everything and carry it on hangers — a wrinkle is the one flaw retouching will not fix for free.

The reasoning underneath all of it: at the size casting actually views your photo — a thumbnail in a grid, dozens to a page — a plaid shirt is visual noise arriving at the same moment as your eyes. Solids lose that fight on purpose.

Necklines are the one place photographers genuinely disagree, and the disagreement is informative. Some recommend a scoop or V because it lengthens the neck. Others warn against exactly that, because on a tight crop a wide neckline can read as though you're wearing nothing at all. They're both right — about different crops. Which is why you ask how tight your photographer shoots before you pack.

Two technical notes. Ribbed and finely woven fabrics can produce a shimmering interference pattern under a camera sensor, called moiré. And hair and makeup should match your audition self, not a wedding — you're building a photo you have to be able to reproduce again when you go to audition.

What should you practice?

Not posing. Your photographer handles your chin, your shoulders, and the light; that's what you're paying for. Practice expression — specifically, having a real thought behind your eyes on command, which is a skill you already train every time you work on a scene.

Ten minutes in a mirror, a few days out rather than the night before. Find three:

• Warm. The one that opens a room.
• Grounded and serious. Not stern — settled.
• Listening. The face you make when someone you trust is talking. This is the money shot in most sessions and the hardest to fake, because a listening face has something happening behind it.

It helps to know what you're expressing toward. Look at the roles you actually get called back for — not the ones on your dream list — and notice what those characters have in common. You're not putting on a costume. You're giving casting a reason to picture you in a specific kind of room.

The rest is unglamorous and works: sleep, water, a real meal beforehand because a session takes more energy than anyone expects, a haircut at least a week out so it settles, and arriving early enough that your shoulders come down before the first frame. Photographers will tell you the keeper shots almost always come after the initial stiffness burns off. You can shorten that stretch by not sprinting in from the parking lot.

How many finished images should you order?

Two or three, not eight. That's not a budget compromise — it comes from the platforms for actors. Actors Access gives you two free photo slots; Casting Networks gives free accounts two photo credits. Extra finished images have nowhere to go until you have somewhere to put them.

Last thing: keep retouching light. Blemish removal and color correction are expected; smoothing and reshaping are not, and heavily edited photos get set aside precisely because casting can't trust them to predict who walks in. Print is unforgiving here too — a retouch that looked fine on a phone can look plastic at 8 × 10.

What file sizes do you need?

Two crops of the same photograph. This is the part that trips almost everyone, because the print standard and the upload standard are not the same shape and nobody says so out loud.

Hand the platform your print file and let it sort things out, and it will crop for you without consulting you about where. So the ask to your photographer is simple, and it's a normal request: a print-resolution master, plus web-sized exports for casting sites. Many deliver both unasked. Ask anyway.

Two habits that make you look like you've done this before. Name your files properly — Firstname-Lastname-Theatrical.jpg, not IMG_4821.jpg. And check each platform's specs before you upload, because they move; Casting Networks revised its published file limits as recently as this summer. The numbers above are the platforms' own and current as of writing, but a thirty-second check beats a rejected upload.

How do you print it and pair it with your resume?

For theatre, you print. Film and television have largely gone digital, but stage auditions haven't — Actors' Equity still advises producers to remind performers to bring a picture and resume stapled together, and real audition notices ask for both at once: upload from your phone to a form on arrival, and hand over a hard copy.

• Color, vertical, 8 × 10.
• Matte, not glossy. Half of surveyed casting directors prefer it, for a reason that has nothing to do with looks: pencil won't write on glossy and marker smears. They're taking notes on your photo.
• Start with twenty prints. Enough for a season without leaving you holding a box of a photo you've outgrown.
• Your name on the front — of the print. Digital uploads don't carry it. Any legible font; if your print has a border, that's the natural place.
• Resume on the back, trimmed to 8 × 10 so nothing hangs past the photo, and printed on regular paper rather than photo stock — same note-taking reason.
• Staple all four corners. Loose pages get separated from the photo they belong to.

The name-on-the-front one isn't decoration. Surveyed casting directors are unanimous about wanting it, and a Denver casting director explained the reason better than any style guide could: during casting, headshots get spread across the floor. A name on the front saves somebody's knees.

Common questions

There's a specific pleasure in the moment a session finds it. You've been sitting there feeling like a mannequin for twenty minutes, the photographer says something offhand, you laugh at it for real, and the shutter goes. That's the frame. It's on the contact sheet somewhere between two dozen versions of your polite face, and you'll know it when you see it.

And when the photos come back, you'll need the page that goes on the back of them. The Acting Resume Template is built in the format casting expects, with the margins already set for the 8 × 10 trim.

More tools for putting a season on its feet live in the theatre production templates library.

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