For decades I have heard the agent-actor relationship described as being “like a marriage.” I have heard it from my colleagues in the agency business and of course, it’s been handed down to actors.
But there’s a problem with this marriage comparison. And it’s this: It isn’t. Let’s analyze it a bit, shall we? If the agent-actor relationship is “like a marriage,” how is it that when an actor signs exclusively with an agent (or agency) he or she isn’t allowed to work with any other agencies, but the agent or agency is allowed to have 20, 50, or 100 other clients? So the actor gets one spouse and the agent gets as many as he or she wants? I’m not talking about a situation where an actor is signed for legit/theatrical and then is free to pursue a commercial agent (or vice versa) at a different agency, I’m talking about the implication that you are required to be monogamous and your agent is not. If there are multiple agents working with you from the same agency, then you can quadruple the number of actors they’re juggling as well.
Here’s another problem with the marriage setup: Agency contracts are signed to commence on a specific date
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