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Build a comp card a casting professional can read in five seconds

Sep 20, 2026 2 min read

Your card is your audition. What belongs on it, what order it should be read in, and the mistakes that get a profile skipped.

A casting professional going through a pool does not read profiles. They scan them. Your card has a few seconds to answer three questions: what do you look like, what are your numbers, and what have you done.

Photos first

You do not need a professional photographer to start. You need clear, recent photos taken in daylight: one head shot with a neutral expression, one full-length, and a couple that show range. Avoid heavy filters, group photos where nobody knows which person you are, and pictures more than a year old if your look has changed.

Then the numbers

Height, bust, waist and hips, shoe size and clothing size. Fill them all in. An empty measurement field is not neutral — it is a reason to skip you, because the person searching is filtering on exactly those fields. Measure honestly: a number that is wrong by a few centimetres will be corrected at the fitting, and that is a bad moment to be corrected.

Pick your roles

Roles are how you appear in a search: actor, model, fashion model, brand face. Pick the ones that describe you honestly, not all of them. A card that claims every role reads as a card that has not thought about it.

Experience and showreel

Add what you have actually done, in plain language, most relevant first. If you have a showreel, link it. If you do not, that is fine — an honest short list of work beats a padded one, and a beginner card with clean photos and complete measurements is perfectly competitive for open calls.

What goes in the locked album

Swimwear and lingerie shots belong in the locked album, not the public gallery. Only verified companies can ask to see it, and nothing opens without your approval. Keep your public gallery to images you would be comfortable seeing anywhere, because that is the part of your card the world can see.

Five common mistakes

Keep it current

Update your card when your look changes — haircut, colour, weight, new work. The card is not a one-time form; it is the page a company will look at the day they need someone, and that day is not announced in advance.

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