I've noticed a lot of pay rates include credits; what are they?

Not so much "pay," so much as your name listed at the end. Whoopee.

Here's a little more from a 2005 column about credits/billing to help flesh out your question/answer.

Dear Jackie:

Are there any other film role titles besides lead, supporting, and featured?

Theresa
Via the Internet


Dear Theresa:

Actor roles are not delineated with specific titles in film credits. Instead an actor’s billing - where his or her name appears in the roll of credits – indicates role size or importance. For example: the actor whose name appears first is said to have, “top billing,” and actors whose names appear before the film’s title have, “above the title billing.” Sometimes, “last billing” - having your name come up last -is reserved for a special appearance or celebrity. Billing is determined in negotiations between an actor, his or her agent, and the production, and the results are not always to everyone’s liking. Take Julia Robert’s storied anger about Catherine Zeta-Jones getting higher billing than she in “Ocean’s Twelve.” Unlike television, where credits like “starring,” or “guest-starring,” are fought for and tied to an actor’s pay rate, a film’s final credits list actors next to their characters names. Sometimes this list is in “order of appearance,” and sometimes the director and producers create an order based on their ideas of role importance.

All well and good, you might say, but what about wording film credits on a resume? In general, “lead,” “starring,” or “principal,” are used to indicate a leading role - that is a large role that appears throughout the film. “Principal” – as opposed to “principle” -is the generally preferred term, but any of these will do. Typically, roles that span several scenes are listed as “supporting,” and roles that appear in just one scene are listed as “featured.” Since there are no hard and fast rules about film credits and they are not specified contractually, you’ll have to use your best judgment as to when a role crosses from “featured” to “supporting.” Many actors list everything that doesn’t qualify as a “lead” as “supporting,” and a good case for that title can be made much of the time. Maybe you only had one scene, but it was large or pivotal. Or maybe you didn’t have many lines, but shared lots of screen time with a leading actor. Still, no matter how blurry the line is, I wouldn’t list a tiny role that way. It may lead to embarrassment when a fellow actor that had an actual “supporting” role - or the film’s CD - doesn’t recognize you. Most importantly, don’t make the mistake of thinking that an extra role – no matter how long the camera scans your face – should be called “featured.” Background work should not be on your resume at all.