If yours is not here, ask us and we will add it.
Nothing. There is no joining fee, no annual fee and no charge for a profile. Our only charge is 20% commission plus VAT, deducted from work we pay you for.
Charging a work-seeker a fee to find them work is prohibited under the Employment Agencies Act 1973. Some agencies do charge a separate listing or membership fee to appear on their books, which is a different charge from a work-finding fee. We do not charge either.
No. Most background work asks you to turn up on time and do what the assistant director says. You can list previous work on your profile, and some jobs do ask for particular skills, but plenty do not.
18 or over. We do not cast children, and we check your date of birth before approving a profile.
Four things:
You can submit your profile for review with the right to work check still outstanding, but we cannot put you forward for a job until it is confirmed.
Usually 2–3 working days. We email you when your profile goes live.
12 months from approval. We remind you 30 days before it expires and renewing is one click and free. If you do not renew, your profile is hidden from productions and then deleted in line with our Privacy Policy.
It depends on your nationality, not on which documents you happen to have.
British or Irish citizens upload a passport or passport card – it counts even if expired. If you do not have one, a birth, adoption or naturalisation certificate together with something official showing your National Insurance number.
Everyone else gives us a share code from gov.uk/prove-right-to-work and we check it with the Home Office using the code and your date of birth. There is nothing to upload. Share codes last 90 days.
Biometric residence permits all expired in October 2024, and an EU passport on its own has not been proof since July 2021. If you used to rely on either, the share code is now the route.
It goes to private storage that has no public web address at all, and only a signed-in member of our team can open it. We delete it two years after your last booking through us, so that a production can still ask us to evidence the check behind a job you did. If you never work through us, it goes when your profile does.
Not to register. Some productions ask for one, particularly where children or vulnerable adults are on set, so holding one widens what we can offer you.
You apply for your own basic certificate at gov.uk – we cannot apply on your behalf. Send it to us and we will look at it, record the type, issue date and certificate number, and delete our copy after 10 days. A DBS certificate has no expiry date; productions generally want one issued in the last 18 months.
Two ways. Productions post casting calls that you apply to from the board, and productions also search our register directly and request people by name. Keeping your photos, measurements and availability current is what puts you in the second group.
It varies enormously. Some bookings are weeks out; some are the night before, because someone dropped out. Keeping your availability calendar honest means we only call you when you can actually say yes.
Yes, and declining costs you nothing. Accepting and then not turning up is the problem: repeated no-shows lead to suspension or removal, because a production left short on the day remembers who left them short.
Rates are set by the union agreements – FAA/PACT, Equity/PACT, BBC/Equity and ITV/Equity – not by us or by any agency. Every job names its agreement. The current figures, including overtime, night rates, early calls and travel, are on our rates page.
Productions pay us, then we pay you by BACS to the account on your profile. We aim to pay within 10 working days of receiving cleared funds from the production, and your dashboard shows where each job has got to. You get a remittance for every payment showing gross, commission and net.
Your job sheet. On the day, the assistant director signs you in, signs you out at wrap, adds anything extra you are owed – travel, meals, a costume change, a haircut – and signs it off.
We then send it to you. You have 48 hours to accept it or raise a query. If we hear nothing it is accepted automatically and payment proceeds, but that does not stop us correcting a genuine error later. If you query it, we investigate and tell you the outcome.
Self-employed. You are paid gross, with no tax or Class 1 National Insurance deducted, and you declare the earnings on your own self-assessment return. We are your agent, not your employer.
Yes. Commission applies to everything we collect for an engagement, allowances included. We checked the published terms of nine agencies before settling on it, and every one of them does the same. It is clause 8.2 of the Artiste Terms.
You are owed a cancellation fee, which we collect for you:
If you need to cancel, tell us as early as you can. We do not charge you for it.
Productions with an approved account on our platform. Your profile is not public and is not indexed by search engines. Your bank details and National Insurance number are never shared with a production.
No. It is optional and you can clear it at any time. Productions use it to cast authentically, so sharing it can mean more work, but it is entirely your choice and we ask for your explicit consent at the point you enter it.
Ask us and we will do it. We have to keep financial records of work you have actually done for six years, which is an HMRC requirement, but everything else goes.
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