Spotlight Children and Young Performers was 25 years old in May 2004.
Since 1979, the directory has built a reputation as the best place to source talented child artists for TV, Stage, Film and Commercial work. It features young actors from the UK’s leading theatre schools and agencies, aged from five years old through to their late teens.
History
Although the original Spotlight directories were founded in 1927, it was another 52 years until child artists were given a Spotlight of their own.
Traditionally they had appeared in a small section at the back of Spotlight Actresses, but growing numbers in the seventies began to justify the launch of a new, children-only casting directory.
Kenneth Seale, the then proprietor of Spotlight, approached key drama schools and agencies including Sylvia Young, Jackie Palmer, Italia Conti, Doreen English and Barbara Speake. Keen to explore new ways of promoting their young clients to the industry, they were instrumental to the success of the first edition.
Unlike the actors and actresses directories, which are collated alphabetically, it was decided that entries in the new directory should be grouped by school or agency, in order of who submitted the most children each year. Altogether, the 23 founding schools and agencies put forward a total of just over 1000 child artists, and Spotlight Children was born.
In 1996, Spotlight Children became Spotlight Children and Young Performers, to help the promotion of performers in their late teens - too old to be classified as “children” but too young to appear in the main Spotlight Directories.
Famous faces
The directory has seen the launch of many successful performance careers. Previous editions provide a fascinating glimpse of today’s famous faces as budding young actors, including Dennis Waterman, Michael Crawford, Francesca Annis, Tony Robinson, Patsy Kensit and Denise Van Outen – plus those who went on to pursue successful musical careers, such as Simon Le Bon, Nicole and Natalie Appleton, Emma Bunton and a young Philip Collins.
Numbers have since grown year-on-year, and today the 2004-2005 edition features over 3,500 entries from 44 stage schools and agencies. Now, as before, the directory only features children who receive full-time drama training, or who are represented by professional agencies – so casting directors can expect high-standard, trouble-free performances from any child they cast.
Spotlight on the Internet
With the launch of Spotlight Interactive in 2000, Spotlight Children and Young Performers also became available to casting directors via the Internet. This allows performers to add new photos throughout the year – extremely valuable for child artists since they grow and change so rapidly.
As Ben Seale, partner at The Spotlight, puts it: “Actors may worry about their haircut in their current Spotlight photo, but imagine losing your two front teeth the day before your Spotlight photo-shoot!”
See this story as featured in The Stage newspaper