Spotlight’s Managing Director, Matt Hood, answers your questions about Spotlight and the wider creative industry.
In this episode of The Spotlight Podcast, Spotlight’s Managing Director Matt Hood answers your questions about Spotlight and more. From making the most of your Spotlight profile and new platform features to membership costs, the Equity case, auditions, and advice for performers, Matt covers a wide range of topics to help you navigate your performing career.
Spotlight’s Managing Director, Matt Hood. Image by Isabella Behraven.
Questions were submitted via our website, newsletter and social channels. 54 questions were sent on a wide variety of topics. Thank you to everyone for taking the time to share them with us.
Take a listen:
You can also listen to the podcast on Podbean, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Show Notes
- How Spotlight looks and works for casting directors
- How Spotlight looks and works for agents
- Information about the membership discount for deaf, disabled and/or neurodivergent performers can be found under the ‘join now’ button on this page.
- The Spotlight bursary scheme
- Audition advice and tips
- Spotlight Contacts – agents listings
- Wellbeing in the Arts
- Renting Spotlight’s Voice Booth
- Full list of questions submitted
Episode Transcript
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and about how you came to be the Managing Director of Spotlight?
Matt Hood: I joined Spotlight in June of 2021. Previous to that, I had worked for Equity, the trade union for performers for 17 years. I joined them in 2004 having worked previously for the doctor’s trade union, the British Medical Association.
Way back when I was a student, I did a lot of student politics. I was very interested in how politics and collective action can change the world. But I was also interested in the arts. I had a radio show, weekend breakfast show, and I produced theatre.
I left university, went and worked for a trade union, which was a great way of getting into that kind of collective action world, but always had that kind of passion for the arts as well. At the end of 2003 Equity, who had exited the closed shop in the 90s realised they wanted to actually grow the union for the first time, created a new post to help promote membership and grow membership numbers.
The opportunity came up for me to join Equity and I had a really great career there. I worked my way up from that first post recruiting and retaining new members across multiple sectors, not just acting, but stage management and backstage theatre, but also variety acts as well. And ended up as a Deputy General Secretary where I was at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. And so, I worked a long time with Spotlight whilst working in Equity.
Equity and Spotlight have traditionally done a lot of work together to promote the interests of performers and also from Spotlight’s perspective, help the union grow and strengthen Equity as a trade union as well. And so, when the company was bought by Talent Systems and they were looking for somebody to take over from the Seale family who’d run the company historically, the opportunity was there for me to move over to a company that I’ve known and loved for many years and worked alongside some great colleagues who are here. So that was the journey from my student days through Equity into Spotlight in 2021.
What’s the best bit about your job at Spotlight?
Matt Hood: This is an amazing industry to work in. You’ve seen loads of news articles recently about the way in which the UK industry has just continued to grow. We have great facilities in the UK. As a company we’re also operating in Ireland, which has a very similar story to the UK in terms of opportunities and growth as well. So to be part of such a vibrant sector, to help expand opportunity and inclusion in that sector, which is very dear to my heart, is really what gets me out of bed every morning and keeps me coming into the offices at Spotlight.
Kristyn Coutts: And on that note, we have been taking some questions from our Spotlight members, and that’s why you’re here today talking to us.
Matt Hood: Perfect.
Kristyn Coutts: There’s quite a lot. There’s over 50 questions so I’ve kind of bunched them up. We’re going to answer as many as we can today, and then anything we don’t answer, I’ll try and get answers for you that we can publish on the website. So going straight in…
How many young performers are there on Spotlight?
Matt Hood: I think the last count there are around 20,000 young performers. That’s performers aged under 18, so aged four to their 18th birthday.
Why are the phones at Spotlight no longer staffed?
Matt Hood: The phones at Spotlight are definitely staffed. You can as a Spotlight performer member call the Spotlight support team. They’re there to help with a number of questions from subscriptions to how you use the software.
Do U.S. casting directors access Spotlight?
Matt Hood: Some do. Traditionally, US casting directors have worked in partnership with UK casting directors or other European casting directors depending on the territory in which they’re working.
Nobody knows a country’s talent base better than a casting director based in those countries so it’s always best when people work in partnership and help each other find performers in different territories where they’re not based. That doesn’t mean that we gate keep and keep people out of seeing who are Spotlight talents. But that’s not how the industry generally works.
Do you plan to organise networking events with actors and directors?
Matt Hood: It’s something we’ve done historically. One of the things I think we have to look at with our membership being so geographically spread and not just around the UK but, as I said, in Ireland and other parts of Europe and even further afield, is that in-person events don’t necessarily work for the majority of our subscribers. So the more that we can put events online and make them more inclusive and accessible to people wherever they are in the world, whatever they’re doing at that time, including whether you’ve got things like childcare responsibilities or other reasons why it’s difficult to leave your own home. We are much more minded to do those sorts of events than to do lots of in-person events that only benefit a few people.
Kristyn Coutts: Well, the next question is on in-person events, and saying that the majority of them feel like they’re held in London, as Spotlight has members all over the UK and Ireland and further afield. Are there plans to increase the number of in-person events held in the regions?
Matt Hood: Obviously, having rented premises in Central London means we can put on events ourselves here at a low cost. The lower we keep costs, the lower we can keep subscription fees. As I said, the better idea is to do more things online that makes it more accessible for people. We will continue to do a limited number of in-person events, and we will try to do those in a more widespread fashion around the country and countries as well, but more online I think is going to be more accessible for more people.
Kristyn Coutts: I think we can get more people involved as well when they’re online.
Matt Hood: Absolutely.
Can we add a feature similar to Casting Networks [our sister platform in the U.S.] that allows actors to see when roles they’ve auditioned for have been cast?
Matt Hood: Yes, that’s definitely something that we’d like to put as a facility for casting directors in the future. I think one of the important things to say about what Spotlight is and what Spotlight isn’t and maybe help set the scene a bit better, is Spotlight is an advertising resource. It’s something we traditionally did through publications, as books. Now we provide a software solution but it’s a resource primarily for you to advertise through.
It is not categorically a work-finding service. So we have no influence in work-finding for you individually. We don’t put you forward for roles. We don’t act as an agency for you. Once you have paid to advertise via Spotlight, you may then choose to engage an agency to do work-finding services for you, or you may choose to do that yourself and save the money of the agent’s fee by engaging in work-finding services on your own behalf. We don’t do any of that work for you as Spotlight. Neither are we casting professionals. We are not there choosing the talent to work on different productions either. We provide software services for you to either advertise or for casting directors to advertise their roles. And so, we will continue to build features for both of those groups of people, for talent and for casting directors and indeed for the agents who represent the talent as well. But we are not getting involved in any of those processes advocating for talent, acting as an agency, or indeed hiring talent either.
Can it be implemented so actors can see what roles they have been submitted for?
Kristyn Coutts: There’s a little caveat here saying self-repped subscribers of Spotlight have the ability to submit to jobs directly, but should represented subscribers also be able to see their agents’ submission lists too?
Matt Hood: That goes back to a conversation between you and the person you hired as an agency. Lots of agencies do have the ability to share the roles they’ve submitted talent for. It’s not the job of Spotlight to interfere between the talent and the agency they’ve chosen to hire. So if it’s something that we could provide for agencies to provide for their clients, it’s something we certainly look at. But it’s a conversation that the performer and the agency they’ve hired need to have between themselves
Why can’t we filter castings by unread?
Matt Hood: It’s a very good question. It’s something that’s in our list of things to put in place. We’ll see if we can get it put up that list a bit higher.
Why can’t actors see who looks at their profile?
Matt Hood: We did put something in place a couple of years ago, and you remember something we had called Premiere, which was a product that we put on the market and withdrew after some feedback. One of the things we put in that product was the ability to see who had been looking at your profile. When we put it through the testing that we did ahead of the Premiere launch, it didn’t score particularly highly in the feedback. And so, it’s not something that actually on evidence basis is something that our performers particularly wanted to see. Technically, it’s quite possible, but whether it actually contributes to things like mental health and well-being in the industry is another question. And so, it’s something we can bring back again to look at another time perhaps.
What does the Spotlight website look like for casting directors?
Matt Hood: That’s a really interesting question because we do have some videos available online to take you through what the casting director experience of using the software looks like. It’s very hard to describe it in an audio sense.
Kristyn Coutts: I can link it actually. So from the podcast episode, I’ll link to those videos so you can have a look. How Spotlight looks for casting directors.
Matt Hood: Perfect. I think it’s definitely worth, as an actor, understanding how people see how you advertise yourself, what they look for. And what’s really important is that more than half of the work that happens on Spotlight, the casting directors who use it, is them searching for, looking at, shortlisting profiles. That’s the majority of what goes on in the platform. It’s not sending out breakdowns, as we call them. It’s not really sending out information about jobs that they are casting for. It’s more about them looking for talent and making lists of talent.
When will the Android app be made available?
Kristyn Coutts: And then, there’s a question about should Spotlight membership be discounted for Android users, as they’re having a slightly different experience?
Matt Hood: Yeah, it’s something we’ll have to look at. The number of people who use Android as Spotlight performer members is a significant minority, and so it’s not been a priority for us to build an Android app.
One thing that we resolved to do after we took Premiere off the market in 2023 was to have a single price for a single service no matter whether people used all the services or not. And so, consistent with that, whether you choose to use the app or don’t use the app, the subscription price remains the same.
Why is the annual membership fee so expensive?
Matt Hood: I would argue that the membership fee isn’t that expensive. We’ve looked at the membership fee from 2010 to 2025, and the cost of a Spotlight subscription is about 9% below where inflation would’ve taken it to over the same period, so about £10 cheaper than inflation alone would’ve taken it to. By contrast, you’ll see Equity subscriptions, which went up about 18.5% this year. They’re about 20% higher than they would have been had just inflation taken them. That’s not a criticism of Equity, that’s their own value proposition to argue to their own subscribers. But certainly, as ours has been consistently below inflation and I would certainly say it’s not that expensive. And in real terms, it’s cheaper than it was historically.
There’s a couple more questions around fees. “The service is less reliable and we get less for our money.” And another is, “Why should actors pay the fee when actually we should be charging casting directors and production companies?”
Matt Hood: I don’t think the service is less reliable. We’ve invested in technology very heavily over the years, and if you compare the books that were sent out to the service we offer now, up until we published the last book, you had to choose one headshot per year. You could just put your agent in there. You had very limited information about your skills, about your own demographic characteristics. However you wanted to advertise yourself was very limited in print. We’ve expanded that to give you much more functionality as a way of advertising in a digital service.
When it comes to who should pay, as I said before, this is an advertising service. It is not a work finding service. And for freelancers to pay to advertise themselves is not unique to this industry at all. It happens across a wide range of industries, and it gives you the control about where you are seen and how you are portrayed. And actually, as a cost, if that is your sole marketing cost per year of around £200 as a freelancer, that is incredibly cheap compared to lots of other industries as well.
If it was a service that was paid for by production companies, it becomes a private database of people they want to see, and not an expansive and open advertising opportunity for performers.
To be able to, as a performer, put yourself in the same place as Oscar winners so that the same eyes are looking at you, whether you’ve just come out of drama school or whether you’ve done a few plays or whether you have won an Oscar or a BAFTA is an amazing opportunity and a very reasonable price.
If you look at companies like Checkatrade, Trust A Trader, you have freelance tradespeople there who pay around £200 a month to advertise on those sites. No one is going to say, “Well, rather than the plumber advertise or the people who use plumbing services should collectively put their money together to pay for that plumber to advertise on that site.”
[Spotlight membership is] tax-deductible. The VAT is refundable if you’re VAT registered, and it is, as I said as a cost, it is much lower to enter this profession than almost any other profession as a freelancer.
What is the actual reason behind the price hikes when there are no added benefits that support actors?
Matt Hood: There are plenty of additional benefits. We’re putting new features into the software each year. And we’ve kept prices at or around and often below inflation over the last 15 years.
Costs go up. We recently moved premises, we downsized our premises, but the reality is that rents go up, certainly faster than our fees have ever gone up. So staff costs, most of our costs are in our great people that we hire and use to run Spotlight. All those things go up, so that’s the reason why fees increase.
The challenge comes to companies when they don’t increase fees with inflation and suddenly have to catch up, something that we had to do at Equity in the noughties. That goes down very badly. It’s much better to consistently keep inflationary rises in your subscriptions so you don’t have to have a sudden catch-up at any point.
Why are long-term members being charged rejoining fees?
Matt Hood: We don’t charge rejoin fees. It’s something that Equity does do and has done historically, but there are no rejoin fees at Spotlight.
We’ve got a couple of questions on discounts. “Is there an opportunity for recurring members to get a discount on their renewal in the future?” And “I’m 67 and should get a discount after paying so many years of Spotlight.”
Matt Hood: We offer two major discounts, well, one major discount and one major bursary scheme at the moment. The discount that we offer is a reduction for people who identify as deaf, disabled, or neurodivergent. It’s something we’re very proud to do, and we use the social model of disability. It’s not about being assessed by Spotlight. If you believe that as a deaf, disabled, or neurodivergent person you are discriminated against in the industry, and we can help with that by reducing your fee, then there’s a 50% reduction we offer for those people.
The other is that we do offer a bursary of people who are finding it difficult to pay for economic reasons. We offer about a thousand of those each year to people who apply. And again, that’s a way of making sure that the right people are assisted to be in Spotlight. A general reduction or reduction just for certain reasons which aren’t related to your ability to pay means that prices go up for other people. So we’d much rather make sure that we can target those discounts and those bursaries to people who need them most.
I’m in my second year of membership and I haven’t landed an advertised role despite having three agents over that period and my own job filters. Is Spotlight having particular issues at present?
Matt Hood: Look, it goes back to that original question, that we are not the company you’ve hired to find work. You have paid to advertise yourself as a freelance performer on Spotlight. That puts the right people, the best people possible to see your profile. But that doesn’t mean that’s where the work ends. It’s great that you’ve hired three agencies. If that is not finding you work, if you have hired people who are unable to find work for you, then definitely reconsider the agencies that you’ve hired.
But it’s also worth doing your own work finding activity as well. The profile is only as good as you make it. Make sure that you put all the right information on there. Keep it up to date, make sure you have the right headshots, make sure you have the right media, whether that’s audio reels or showreels or other material. But also, you can promote your link to your Spotlight profile as far and wide as you see fit; whether that’s sending it to the right casting directors or producers, whether it is putting it on your social media, that is up to you. If you just sit back and think, “Oh, I’ve paid my subscription, that’s all I need to do,” then work is not going to automatically find you. You need to be proactive and promote yourself and hustle for your own work. That’s how this industry works.
What’s the single most important thing to have your Spotlight profile to secure more work?
Matt Hood: Accuracy. Accuracy in everything you’ve put on there. Keep your credits up to date, keep your skills and all your personal attributes up to date. Make sure your height is properly listed and your eye colour. Make sure that if you say you can speak French, you can genuinely speak French. The number of times at Equity we were dealing with people who turned up on set and they said they could horse ride and couldn’t or they could drive a car and they couldn’t. Always be truthful, always be accurate on what you have on your profile. And be as detailed as you can be. You never know when someone is looking for someone who can make the perfect latte on camera. If you’ve got barista skills, there’s the opportunity to put that on your profile as well.
How can I increase my chances of getting a good agent?
Matt Hood: Research is probably the best you can do. And remember, you are hiring the agent. The way the industry works is you look for someone who can represent you and find you work best. They are not hiring you, they are not picking you as a talent. You are hiring them because they are the best-positioned person to promote your skills and find work for you.
If it’s not working, maybe the fit isn’t right. Maybe they’re not looking for work in the areas where you are the strongest, and maybe you need an agent who is better positioned to find work in those areas where your career can most flourish. So research, find the agent that works best for you. Find a relationship with the agent that works best for you particularly, and don’t be afraid if things aren’t working to change.
What are you doing to combat the extreme gatekeeping that plague this industry, depriving members of access to opportunities?
Matt Hood: I certainly don’t believe that Spotlight is a gatekeeper. Our job is to be a facilitator. Our job is to allow as many professional performers to advertise through our services as possible, and for them to use our services to find themselves work or to help their agents find them work. That’s what we’re here for.
Maybe there’s been a reality to gatekeeping in the past, that’s not where we are now. The more we can expand opportunity, the more people can see new talent, the more people can also look again at existing talent. We can’t just be obsessed with the novel in this industry and only look to people who are joining for fresh new talent. There are loads of people who’ve been working consistently for 20, 30 years who we need to make sure that continue to be able to have rewarding and sustainable careers.
But yeah, gatekeeping is something that we all need to combat, and one of the ways we do that is to kind of increase social capital to people who aren’t in this industry already. So if you look at the three things that are often cited as the reasons why the industry is not as inclusive and diverse as it could be, there’s the costs of entry, which are arguably lower than most other professions. You compare the costs of entry for acting to those of accounts or medicine or veterinary or legal, it’s actually much cheaper to get into our industry. And so, the cost of entry argument is probably the weakest argument that we’ve got in terms of why this industry isn’t as inclusive and diverse as it could be.
The second is social capital, which is how do people find the knowledge about getting into this industry and how do they thrive? And you see that what happens a lot is there’s people who go into this profession because they have relatives in the profession or they are going through the sorts of schools, not even higher education, but schools where there are great drama facilities or there are people who come in and do talks for the pupils about what it’s like to be an actor. Those sorts of things, which are really hard to quantify, have a huge impact on who goes into the arts.
And so, one of the things that Spotlight has always been committed to is how do you increase social capital? How do you tell more people about opportunities in the arts that they don’t know exist? How do you make this appear to be a viable career when it’s not something you’ve ever seen anybody from your background do? And that increase of social capital is something that we’ve historically worked with Equity about but also with other partners. And there are great organisations like Open Door who we partner with, who really do a good job of trying to break down those barriers, some financial but largely the social capital about access to the industry.
The third part of it is the bit that’s least in Spotlight’s control, but probably is the most profound, which is it’s not the cost of getting in our industry that’s the problem. It’s the cost you get out or the rewards you get out. The low fees historically have been the biggest barrier for people coming into our profession. Because if you sit down with your teenagers and you think about what they might want to do as a profession, you could look at our sector and you go, “You’re not going to work and you’re not going to earn.” Or you can look at medicine or law or accountancy and go, “I can see the return. This is what I want for my children.”
And so, that for me and certainly when I’ve been speaking to people from different communities who are underrepresented in this profession, one of the biggest barriers is the fact they just don’t see it being a rewarding and sustainable career if their families, their children or themselves want to go into the arts. And we improve that by bringing more jobs to the UK and Ireland, and we do that by increasing the wages that people get when they work in the sector.
Those things aren’t in Spotlight’s control, they’re in Equity’s control largely, certainly the fees are. And so, we all need to work to make sure that the compensation people get not just for the work they do on screen on stages there, but also the way that their work is then sold on.
And things like AI, making sure that the copyright is not circumnavigated and performers’ rights exploited. That’s where the investment in the sector needs to go, to make sure that this is work that is rewarding and sustainable. It’s something we should be doing collectively. But that is the real gatekeeper. People cannot earn by working in this profession, but only the people who have the money in the first place will have opportunities, and that isn’t right.
Are you looking forward to fighting it out in the high court with Equity?
Matt Hood: No, not at all. And there’s not much I can say ahead of the court case. It’s a disappointing scenario. As I said, I worked there for the best part of two decades. I know a lot of people still at the union. The people who are the claimants in the case are all people who are in my phone, people I’ve worked with historically. And so, it’s overwhelming disappointment that they have not responded to our calls to resolve this in a non-legal manner.
Is there anything foreign actors need to know or understand about the film industry that is unique to only Great Britain or Ireland?
Matt Hood: The way in which the industry works globally, there’s not much that is unique. Often though, when you find someone coming to work here from America, they’re surprised to get a car that takes them to set in the morning, which apparently is quite unusual in the U.S. industry. That’s the biggest kind of practical difference I think that I’ve ever come across. They’re both very professional industries. Same across Europe. I don’ think there’s any material differences that I can think of that would be helpful.
What’s the best way to secure an audition?
Matt Hood: As I said, Spotlight has very little involvement in you finding an audition. However you are applying for an audition, whether it’s responding to a casting director who’s contacted you via Spotlight or whether you are responding to an open call or your agent’s got an email from a casting director saying they want to see you for something, it’s just to be prepared. Whether you’re doing it online, whether you’re doing a self-tape, whether you’re in the room with a casting director, nothing beats preparation.
Now, sometimes the turnaround times are low, and the whole industry, I think, including casting directors, want to make sure that people have enough time to prepare. Nobody is interested in seeing people who aren’t prepared, whether it’s on tape or in person. So the more opportunity you’ve got to prepare for your audition, the better.
If you think it’s not going to work for you, say it early. If you start going through the audition process preparing for it and you don’t see that you are the right fit, then just say it. Don’t be afraid of speaking your mind.
Kristyn Coutts: We have lots and lots of content on auditions on our website, so I’ll happily link to those as well in case there’s any insight there that would be helpful. We have audition advice from casting directors specifically as well, which might be helpful.
Why do certain performing arts colleges have the monopoly on auditions?
Matt Hood: That’s something that I’m unaware of. Your drama education is part of what prepares you for the industry, but it’s not everything.
Does your English need to be at RP level to audition for substantial parts in London theatres?
Matt Hood: That would depend on what the requirements for the role are. If you are doing a regency play, that may be something that is imperative. If you’re doing something contemporary, I don’t see many reasons why it should be. But that’s an artistic decision that not just the casting director but the production company will make.
Here’s a scenario for you. “Why do I and my friend, who is also a paying member, have completely different experiences? His agent is in the top 20, and he gets auditions from Spotlight that my agent doesn’t even know about. Surely we should have the same opportunity if we both pay the same fee.”
Matt Hood: There’s lots of different things to unpack there. So your opportunity that you get through advertising through Spotlight is identical. Your profile is what you make of it and how you promote it is in your hands. Casting directors who do not use Spotlight exclusively, they may use a number of services including social media to find talent, will always decide who they want to ask to see. That is entirely within their gift, and nothing that Spotlight controls. Neither is your agency something that Spotlight has some control over. We don’t know which casting director is approaching which agent about which project. That’s just not something that Spotlight is privy to.
Going back to my previous answers, if your agency is not working out for you, if they are not working for the money that they get to secure you work, then you need to consider changing your agent to somebody who has the right connections, who is networking with casting directors on your behalf.
If you’re not paying an agent, that is work you have to do yourself. And you’re saving that money ostensibly, but you are going to have to put the work in in place of hiring an agent to do it.
How do I find an agent?
Matt Hood: If you’re not currently represented and you’re looking for representation, and that is not always the case if you’re unrepresented – there are plenty of actors who choose to be self-represented in order to save money on the agency fees and to have greater control over how they’re portrayed and what they put themselves forward for. But if you are in the scenario of looking for an agent, we offer you the ability to indicate that on your profile. That gives agents who are looking to fill their rosters where they know they have gaps in their client lists [the ability] to look through unrepresented talent and know that person is actively seeking representation, [and to] approach them if they think they’re right for the gaps in their roster.
That doesn’t mean that’s the only way you can do it, and it’s often helpful to look through the contacts list that Spotlight has as a free resource on our website. Look through agencies and look through agencies lists and think, “Well, actually I can fulfil a need. This agency doesn’t have somebody in this genre. I would be great. They’ll be great for me.” Have a meeting, see whether that relationship works out.
So there are many ways of doing it, but I’m glad that we can give people the ability to connect through that Talent Scout feature.
How accessible is the viewing process for agencies to look through Spotlight profiles for people who are open to representation? What do they see?
Matt Hood: They will see a list of those people looking for representation. They can filter that list by certain characteristics, and then they can access your profile. So again, if you’re keeping your profile up to date for any other person to look at, then an agent looking to see whether you are going to be a good fit for their agency will see that same information.
How do agents work on Spotlight?
Matt Hood: If you’ve given an agent authorisation to work on your behalf, then they can use Spotlight’s features to basically manage their roster, to look at who might fit a particular role that they’ve seen. It’s really a discussion that you should have with your agent, but there’s also videos again on our website about how agencies use the site on behalf of their talent.
Do profiles for actors without representation get limited views versus an actor who does have representation?
Matt Hood: Not necessarily at all. If you’re a casting director and you’re looking through profiles, you may go to a particular agency’s website, look through United Agents’ website, look at their talent on their website or through Spotlight. But if you’re looking particularly at self-represented talent, there’s nowhere else to go but Spotlight. And so, disproportionately actually self-represented talent get more views because they tend to be undiscovered talent from a casting director’s and agent’s perspective and so warrant more attention. So it’s not necessarily the case that self-represented people are seen less. In fact, I’d probably argue they get seen a bit more.
Self-represented actors only see about 10% of castings. Why do we have to pay the same as those with representation?
Matt Hood: So, it goes back to the previous answer. Your ability to advertise is exactly the same. We do not control who casting directors will send information to. They use the software on their own to do their own job, and do not send things to Spotlight to do things on their behalf. So we don’t control what casting directors do, what searches they put in place, who they correspond with using the platform. All we can control is whether you get the exact same opportunities as every other subscriber to promote yourself on the site. And that’s what we do diligently and religiously.
I would like to see Spotlight open up castings to benefit unrepresented actors. Are there plans to do this?
Matt Hood: Our job is to make sure that the people who advertise through Spotlight, who use our software to advertise themselves, we put that collective of people in front of the best eyeballs on the planet to look at that talent. What those eyeballs (and we are largely talking about what casting directors) do after that is entirely within the casting director’s own control. We’re always saying to the people who access Spotlight from the casting side to cast their net as far and wide as possible, and we continue to advocate for the whole of our talent, not just individuals, never individuals. But we don’t make those decisions. That’s made by casting teams themselves.
As a self-represented performer, what are your best tips for standing out when submitting yourself for a role?
Matt Hood: I think that’s a really interesting question to ask casting directors, people who are looking for talent with a particular eye. That’s not our eye. We are not doing that at Spotlight. But I think it’s a really interesting question, maybe something we can create some more content on and ask casting directors how, as a self-represented person, can you stand out on the platform? We really need to know the professional answer to that.
Why are less photos on your profile better?
Matt Hood: It’s an interesting point. If you are seen to be curating your profile better, it makes you look more professional. I think that’s the short answer to that. If you have 35 different looks on your profile, no one is going to look through them, is the reality of it. And it makes it look like you aren’t able really to promote and control a cohesive image of yourself. That would be the short answer to it. Honestly, if you think that is the best place for you, link to your Instagram and put a whole 100-picture showreel up there and see if it works for you.
What skills would you consider are essential for actors nowadays?
Matt Hood: That is definitely a question to ask the casting profession. What I enjoy about the range of performers in the UK is they’re so diverse. They have so many different skills. From people who surprise you because you think they have a very particular persona and then do something completely different to that persona and that wows you, to people who are totally chameleonic and will always inhabit new characters. There’s no one-size-fits-all, and it really is dependent on the project. The best person to tell you about what they’re looking for artistically is a casting director.
Do you have any insight into how important it is to build your social media accounts as an actor?
Matt Hood: It becomes increasingly important in the commercial part of the industry. That’s not just TV commercials, but in commercial theatre and other kinds of recorded media as well. Even in theatre, when you’re looking at regional theatre, where selling all those seats in every venue on a tour is really sometimes dependent on the way in which some of the cast are connected with different parts of the country. So it does have a role.
It’s not an artistic role, and there are very few roles that are not cast artistically first. But where it does sometimes become important is where there’s a commerciality to getting an audience, often a live audience, and that can be an asset to the production.
What do you recommend for actors who are going through a bit of a rough time with their mental health and might experience things such as agoraphobia? Is it possible to pursue their acting dream?
Matt Hood: Yes. We’re very proud to be partnered with Wellbeing in the Arts, and I think you’ve interviewed Adam Bambrough recently about the service they provide and also his journey into providing that service. For me personally, how we can add services which contribute to wellbeing in general is really important. I’m also a trustee of BAPAM, the British Association for Performing Arts Medicine. They also offer services for both physical and mental health and wellbeing as well. So there are a number of resources in the industry to go to. Things like agoraphobia or stage fright are things that both those organisations are very familiar with and can help with. Each individual’s road to recovery is markedly different, and it’s very hard to say what works for one person may work for the next. But there is help and there is almost always a path through.
Kristyn Coutts: If you need access to any of that help, please go to our website and you can find information about how to contact Wellbeing in the Arts and you get six free sessions if you’re a UK-based 18+ Spotlight member.
What can I do to feel more engaged when I’m not working as an actor to further my career?
Matt Hood: Keep networking, particularly with other actors. And also look at ways to keep skills development up. One of the ways in which this industry in the UK and Ireland is quite different from other industries abroad is that sometimes people stop continuously developing and feel that their training and experience has been robust enough. Never do that. Always keep looking for ways to develop and keep up your skills.
By doing that and keeping up your skills work, you often connect with other actors in a very similar position to you. With the way that the industry is evolving, being more of a polymath and being a creator, not just an actor, is important. That can help you meet people who then you may go on to create artistic works with them, then go on to have other successes. So just keep speaking to fellow professionals in the industry, keep networking, keep developing your skills, and that will help you stay connected.
If we want to start our own podcast, how can we get help at Spotlight?
Kristyn Coutts: I would say you can rent the booth that we’re currently recording this podcast in, so feel free to have a look at that. Details are on the website. Anything else, Matt?
Matt Hood: I don’t have to answer that question. You did it perfectly, Kristyn.
Are Spotlight planning to extend their network for more international coverage?
Matt Hood: Yes. Our intent is that as many people as possible look at Spotlight talent. That’s what we want to get out of the advertising service that we offer. It’s only ever going to be as good as the people who are looking at it.
As I said, I think the cost-efficient and effective central resource that we offer means that you can maximise your expenditure on advertising. Our job is to make sure that your collective adverts are seen as far and wide as possible. If that means that there are people working abroad looking for talent who are interested in seeing the talent we have at Spotlight, that’s certainly something that we will look at doing.
The industry works best when it’s in partnership, operating internationally with people who know the talent that they’re looking at already and have more than just a picture in front of them when it comes to knowing the breadth and skills and the depth of those that are available.
What do you forecast for Spotlight within the next five years, and how do you want the platform to develop?
Matt Hood: One of the things I’m looking forward to is our 100th birthday, so in 2027 we will be a full century old. We may even go back as a one-off to doing a published publication, a new version of the old print version. Certainly, when you look back at the 1920s versions here, it’d be lovely to do something that was a 100-year anniversary [version] of those.
Technology is going to keep developing. We’re going to keep investing in the platform. For us, our main interest is in our advertisers – our performers – and how they can navigate through an ever-changing industry. We are very conscious about things like AI. We’ve been having conversations with government, civil servants, opposition, ministers around the threats to the industry around AI. And certainly we’re part of that collective in the business that is very keen to make sure that both consent and compensation for artists’ works doesn’t get thrown out through the rush to embrace new technologies. Things are going to change and I think how we continue to evolve, not just the advertising services that we offer, but also the auxiliary services, the training, the workshops, to reflect a changing technological landscape we need to keep on top of as well.
We’re obviously very concerned around things like the effects of global trade wars on the UK and Ireland and the industry’s positions here. Very much part of that coalition advocating to make sure that whatever comes out of different parts of the world, we’ve got enough flexibility within the industry, enough facilities to keep investment going. And maybe that’s the way in which we’ve always looked west from the UK, to where the industry is coming from. Maybe there’s a different kind of global spread of opportunity that goes on. We want to make sure that as the world changes, again, the right people are looking at Spotlight talent, to make sure that our talents are considered first when people are looking for professional performers.
Finally, what have you watched, listened to or read recently that you would recommend?
Matt Hood: I am one episode away from finishing Kaos on Netflix.
Kristyn Coutts: It’s so good. I’m so upset it’s not getting renewed.
Matt Hood: Yeah, I’m gutted that it isn’t coming back. It’s a bit like I was at the end of the series with American Gods and that didn’t come back. I think Kaos has been absolutely brilliant. I also watched The Decameron on Netflix, which was a slightly different experience as well. What We Do in the Shadows, the TV series, I’m watching the final series of that. And I recently started rewatching The Thick of It, which has been a trip down memory lane.
