Dear all. My son is 12, has an agent, has been to 16 commercial auditions, which lead to 4 callbacks, which lead to one "avail", but no booking. He is doing commercial auditions because it appears to be part of "paying one's dues", and because there is value in learning auditioning skills, but he isn't doing it for the money. No, we are not rich, quite the opposite, but neither he nor I have the love of money. He loves acting, he loves going to acting classes, he loves improv, and he wants to act in front of a camera. I do not want to start a discussion about whether commercial acting is acting - the important thing is that he doesn't think it's acting when your face is on camera for one second and you are pulling two halves of a cheese burrito apart. Which brings me to the question: Is there a way to pursue acting without doing commercials? His agent certainly does not think so. They put all kids in a commercial division first, no question asked. They of course want to make money now, not invest in someone's acting career. But since commercials do not go on one's resume anyway, I am thinking there has got to be a way. Also, I wonder if I'm being snotty and presumptuous to think that.

All opinions welcome.

Well, being in NY, my 14yo DS seems to think the path to acting is the stage. He is in demand for coming of age rolls and is starting his "dead years" doing a lot of one act plays and short films. I would think that local, regional theatre and student films is the way for experience at this age. Commercials are just for the fun of it. VO's are more of an acting experience for him than meer seconds of exposure on the tube. (At least I can coach him with his VO work since I was pretty successful at it once upon a time)
Just another dad's POV.
Good luck....

It may be time to start looking for another agent. If you want to do film and television then you need a Film & TV agent and if the agency you are currently with will only start them in the commercial division, then I would switch if I had your goals.
That is surprising because usually the divisions act quite seperately. If the person running the film & tV department wants a kid they sign them regardless of what the commercial department is doing & vice versa. There are many people who are with one agency for commercial and sometimes a completely different agency for film.
Submit to all the film departments of the agencies you are interested in and see if you can get an appointment. You might want to have a little something on your resume though so I would start doing some community theater and student films. In California you are going to be up against many kids who have extremely long resumes and are likely already SAG with several credits under their belt. It's not easy to get a film agent when you have no resume, but it is not impossible. Many people get lucky and boys have it a little easier than girls but by no means does that mean it is easy. Good Luck.

Thanks Actorsmommy,

you are making a lot of sense. We will probably keep status quo until he gets some student movie credits, we'll continue with classes, and then try the film agencies.