So your kid wants to act professionally? Congratulations on entering the chaotic, unpredictable, and magicalworld of showbiz. Here’s your survivial guide - with a dash of humour and a sprinke of reality - to keepyou grounded while your mini superstar chases their dreams.
This guide provides a comprehensive overview of the professional film and television indsutry, with practicaltips on how to navigate through this space gracefully and successfully. With chapters on securing an agent,navigating auditions, understanding a casting brief, an actor’s contract and payment, any parent consideringentering this world will know their child’s rights on set, and how best to support them and their career.

Benita Rixton
Has spent more than two decades in the industry, both in front of and behind the camera. First as atheatre graduate navigating film and television sets and then as a parent cheering her own young performersthrough auditions.
Rixton is the co-founder and owner of the Young Actors Studio, and of the Young Actors Studio Managementwhere she ably represents and advocates for young talent in South Africa and around the world. As Rixtonsays, ‘each role in my twenty-year career has given me a different vantage point, but all of them have shownme the same gap: parents are expected to make smart, time-sensitive decisions with no reliable roadmap.’ Asher inbox overflowed with the same heartfelt questions, she decided to craft this comprehensive guide, rootedin real industry practice, organised with an intuitive flow, and written in plain English.