Remember how we we’re all taught first impressions count? Well they count as much or more in this business.
Good or bad, this is one industry where the labour and racial discrimination laws of our country do not apply.  Your “hit” is a visual first impression of your character. Agents and Casting Directors are flipping through hundreds, if not thousands of photos and resumes. So your “hit”, your first impression, must be clear and must match what they’re looking for in an instant. Time is money.

So what is your “hit”. Your “hit” is a combination of a number of things; your perceived and believable age. No cares you’re really 26 if you look 18, and no one cares you are 26 if your look 34; Your apparent or playable ethnicity (real or perceived); Your apparent or playable class (lower/middle/upper; educated/uneducated; working class white/blue collar) and your perceived geographic origins (city/country, domestic/foreigner).

You need to know your “hit” and an agent needs to have a hole in their roster for your “hit” before they will consider taking you on. You may have a great “hit”, but maybe they just don’t need your “hit” at this time. So, they may in fact set your package aside for future reference. When someone leaves that agent, or gets out of the business you could get a call, any time, even months after you send your package out, to fill that “hit”.

Your mother cannot tell you your hit, nor can your lover or your best friends. The best people to tell you your “hit” are people with who you have a new relationship in the context of our craft as actors. In other words,  I don’t suggest you ask your next blind date, but ask people the people you connect with in your next acting class, or your coarse instructors – but do it early on (1^st or 2^nd class) for the most pure interpretation, before the real and possibly contradictory truth about you permeates their knowledge about who and what you really are.

Here's what to ask...

1) Perceived upper and lower extremes of age range;

2) Perceived ethnicity;

3) Perceived social status (ie lower/middle/upper; educated/uneducated; working class white/blue collar);

4) Perceived Geographic Origins city/country, domestic/foreigner;

5) Roles you could play (ie pilot, thug, dancer etc)

6) Actor who's career you could emulate.

Understand, accept and embrace your “hit”. No matter how great you can act, if they want "a Caucasian male in his 20’s, to play a lower class, rural farmer type with a dark side", they can find that guy. They’re not typically going to bring in a buff, 30 year old, metro-sexual, middle-upper class hipster for the role (unless, maybe, he is a celebrity already). 

LTD!

Kev