Spotlight: Past and Present
Spotlight has been providing casting information to the entertainment industry for 80 years.
The very first directory was published in 1927 by Keith Moss, a stage manager. At the time, the standard method of casting was for actors to send dozens of photographs to every director and producer. Moss’s simple solution was to bring together the photographs, casting details and contact information for actors into one central directory. The first edition of Spotlight contained just 236 artists, and a couple of very talented dogs!
Moss was soon joined by business partner Rodney Millington and together they made Spotlight into an immediate success, with Laurence Olivier, Boris Karloff, John Gielgud and Vivien Leigh just four of the many celebrated performers who appeared in its early editions. Today the famous directories continue to feature generations of the UK's leading actors, from Richard Attenborough to Judi Dench, Stephen Fry to Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes to Keira Knightley. Have a look at the Spotlight Hall of Fame, which contains some of our favourite faces from 1927 – 1984.
Two months after Spotlight’s first edition, the very first talking film hit screens in the UK, then followed by the first ever UK television broadcast in 1932. The entertainment industry grew rapidly – and so did the number of pages in Spotlight. During World War II, paper rationing had a severe impact on the publishing industry, but Rodney Millington argued that Spotlight existed to serve the entertainment industry, and since the entertainment industry served the war effort, Spotlight should be allocated a paper ration.
His petition was successful, and Spotlight continued printing throughout the war and has done so ever since. Millington continued to work at the Spotlight offices well into his eighties, and the modern Spotlight owes much to his vision.
After the war, Kenneth Seale joined Spotlight, and eventually took over as director, a position he held for over forty years before handing over to his son, Nigel Seale. Nigel ensured that Spotlight continued to develop with the times, and the company was an early pioneer of directory publishing in CD ROM format, awarded “CD-ROM Directory Publisher of the Year” in 1993 by the Directory and Data Publishers Association (DPA).
Nigel continued to oversee Spotlight’s transition into a cutting-edge online casting service. It was one of the first directories in the UK to be published online: www.spotlight.com first launched in 1997. As well as the traditional photo and CV, performers were at last able to feature their showreels, voice-clips and photography portfolios, and update their own CVs at any time, from anywhere in the world.
In June 2003, Spotlight was given two prestigious awards by the DPA: the Internet Award, for best UK internet directory, and the Champion Directory Award for best overall UK directory.
Today Nigel’s son, Ben Seale, runs the company, and has continued to expand the many services Spotlight offers to the entertainment industry, as well as increasing its global reach with partnerships in Europe, the US and Australia.
Under his management, Spotlight now provides the entertainment industry with powerful communication tools which have become central to the casting process. Its online casting service unites casting directors with actors and their agents more quickly and easily than ever before.
In 2006, the Spotlight website received over one million artist searches, and actor CVs were viewed a total of 5,753,312 times!
The Spotlight Link (Spotlight’s free audition information service) is now the primary method by which casting professionals communicate with performers and their agents, with a weekly average of 160 casting breakdowns sent out to agents, and over 33,370 artists submitted weekly for an average of 541 individual roles (based on 2006 statistics).
In May 2006, Spotlight yet again won “Directory of the Year” at the DPA Awards.
Ben has also developed Spotlight’s onsite casting facilities, with the launch of two specialist video-casting studios at their West End premises, enabling performers to audition for jobs anywhere in the world, without needing to leave the UK. He also ensures that Spotlight continues to support drama at grass-roots level, backing numerous events and schemes which nurture new acting talent.
Spotlight has come a long way since its first directory of 236 artists in 1927. It now features details for approximately 30,000 professional actors, actresses, child performers, stunt artists, presenters and dancers. But its aim remains exactly the same as it was in 1927: to give professional performers the best and most efficient exposure to casting opportunities. As the industry continues to grow, so will the variety of directory services Spotlight offers to performers, agents and casting professionals, harnessing the very latest technology in order to meet this aim.
