Welcome to a safe place to list with. Transgender Talent is run by and for transgender people. We don't claim to be perfect, but we’re dedicated to giving you the care you deserve. You’re not going to have to educate us about being trans. You’re not going to have to educate us about the difficulties, bigotry and lack of opportunities you’ve had to face just being yourself. We’ve had our share of frustration as well.
Hollywood has a track record stretching back many decades of representing us to the public as being a population of sex workers, criminals, or people to be mocked. It is our belief that this has had a huge impact on multiple generations of western society, furthering and intensifying prejudice and bigotry. We review all material being sent to us for casting calls, and do not submit our people unless it represents us in a reasonable light. We have rejected productions for being too stereotypical, too insulting, or just plain creepy.
We do our best to make sure that all casting calls we submit clients to are legitimate and appropriately representing trans people. We want to educate people through our performances, and use the pain from the hard places we've been in to help people to relate to us on a human level. In a way, Transgender Talent mixes activism with business goals, so that making a buck doesn’t take precedence over our dignity. We want us all to be here to enjoy the fruits of our labor, and not do so at the expense of our trans siblings' lives.
What We Do
We are a talent management company. Our first level of service is as managers, described in more detail below. We also work as a listing service and a contact point for the entertainment industry. We receive casting notices for both specifically trans roles, as well as for roles where the creative staff wants to use a trans person for a cisgender or non-gendered role.
Actors Starting Out
You can’t instantly be a good actor overnight. You will need to gain experience, take classes, and learn the terminology, the methods, how to be directed, and other important facets of the industry. This may mean doing volunteer theater, getting roles in student films, working as a background actor—anything reasonable to get you on a stage or set. We recommend taking both cisgender roles and non-gendered roles. Practice is practice.
If you live in a remote area or one with no safe places to perform, you can always create your own video content, write your own scripts, or do a monologue/dialogue scene found online. For further information, see the Transgender Talent YouTube channel.
Submitting for Listing / Management
Please note that Transgender Talent is a talent management company, not a talent agency. It is advised that you have both an agent and a manager to give you the most opportunities and to navigate the entertainment industry.
Talent management companies by law are not allowed to seek work for their clients – that’s the job of a talent agent. Managers help their talent to be prepared for each step in their career, and to network for them towards more opportunities than an agent might have. Talent agents are needed because about 80% of casting calls that come out are only visible to agents, and not to the actors themselves. Getting in with an agent can be very difficult. One of the first steps Transgender Talent takes with new talent is to shop them around to agents who might be a good fit.
We are looking for actors with range and skill; built upon that could be other talents, such as modeling, dancing, singing, stage fighting, stunt work, or other special skills. If you are strictly only a model, dancer, or singer, it will be difficult for us to connect you with auditions. We are only a conduit for the entertainment industry to find you and others like you, when they are looking.
Reel
When we vet potential clients, we begin by making sure you can act at a sufficient level to get you basic bookings. You need a reel (aka a ‘demo reel’) to prove that, which we also use to shop you to agencies for representation. Basic representation tends to be commercial only, while actors at a certain proficiency level will be offered theatrical and on-camera representation by agents. Your reel should show your full range of acting skills. For detailed information on what your reel needs to contain, we have a PDF available for purchase. For a deeper dive, we have an instructional video taught by Ann Thomas you can pay to view. If you want specific feedback, you can purchase a review of your reel with feedback by Ann Thomas and others of the Transgender Talent staff. These are all available under the Shop tab on here on our web site.
Headshot
Similar to your driver’s license or ID picture, a headshot is literally just a picture of your head. We’d also like a body shot – one of your entire body taken at a distance. A profile shot is helpful as well; you can take this yourself with a high quality cell phone camera. See the the Shop tab on here on our web site for a PDF with details.
Resume
We need to know what experience and training you have. This type of resume is entirely different than a standard business resume. See the the Shop tab on here on our web site for a PDF with details.
Submitting to us
Once you have your reel, headshots and resume, you can send them in to us. The headshots and resume should be small enough to attach to the email. The reel should be so large that it will not attach to an email. If you can attach it, you've not done it correctly - the resolution is too low. The reel needs to be high resolution, so upload it to a safe online platform like WeTransfer, Google Drive, Dropbox, Vimeo (with password), or YouTube (unlisted), and provide us with the access information.
Send all of this to contact@transgendertalent.agency. Please include your full name, how you identify (ie, trans man, trans woman, non-binary, etc), your pronouns, email address, phone number, and location (city, state, and country). If you are not a US citizen, include any information about visa, work permit or immigration status.