Key takeaways
- Never put your full home street address on an acting resume. It travels with every submission and doesn't come back. The standard guidance is unambiguous on this.
- The accepted norm is city and province only (e.g.
Toronto, ON/Vancouver, BC) — or, if you're represented, your agent's business address instead of yours. - That leaves a gap: an unrepresented actor has no agency address to borrow, and city-and-province alone gives casting nowhere reliable to reach you.
- A dedicated Toronto or Vancouver street address fills that gap cleanly — your home stays private, it isn't a PO box, and it gives a real contact point.
- A few other things belong off the resume entirely: exact address, SIN, date of birth, exact weight, and personal social handles.
Short answer
On a Canadian acting resume, list your city and province only — Toronto, ON or Vancouver, BC — not your full home street address and not your postal code. If you're represented, the convention is to use your agent's business address in place of yours, with the agency name. If you're unrepresented, skip the home address entirely and use a dedicated business street address as your contact line (the section below covers exactly why, and what that looks like).
This isn't a stylistic preference. Google's AI Overview for this query states it directly: "never list your full home address. Instead, list only your city and province (Vancouver, BC / Toronto, ON). If you are represented by a talent agent, use that agency's full business address instead." The norm is settled. The part that's missing from most answers is what a self-represented actor is supposed to do, since the fallback everyone names — the agency address — is one you don't have yet.
What casting and agents actually do with your address
Your resume isn't read once and filed. It's attached to the headshot, attached to the agent profile, attached to every submission a breakdown asks for, and forwarded down a chain you don't control. The address line on it is doing two separate jobs, and they pull in different directions.
Privacy and safety. A public casting notice can collect submissions from a wide, unscreened pool. Anything on a resume that goes out to a public breakdown is, functionally, public. A home street address on that document means strangers — not just the casting director — can see where you live. That's why the consistent guidance, including the AI Overview cited above, is to keep the exact address off entirely. This isn't a hypothetical concern; it's the reason the convention exists in the first place.
The first impression of location. The address line also tells casting and agents where you are. Productions in Toronto and Vancouver pay attention to who reads as based in the city. A city-and-province line shapes a first impression before anyone presses play on your self-tape.
One honest caveat here: an address line shapes a first impression — it does not, on its own, establish formal "local hire" status. That's set by each production and usually involves residency, work authorization, and tax-credit rules that go well beyond one line on a page. We won't promise past that. The question of whether you actually need a Toronto address to audition is a different one with a careful answer, and it deserves its own treatment rather than a throwaway claim here.
Your four options, ranked
Here's how the realistic choices stack up for a Canadian actor deciding what to put on the contact line.
| Option | Privacy | Reachability | Who it works for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full home street address | ❌ Exposes where you live to an unscreened pool | ✓ Mail reaches you | Nobody — this is the one to avoid |
City + province only (Toronto, ON) | ✓ Home not exposed | △ No reliable contact point; relies on email/phone only | Everyone, as a baseline minimum |
| Agent's business address | ✓ Home not exposed | ✓ Agency handles contact | Represented actors only |
| Dedicated Toronto / Vancouver street address | ✓ Home stays private | ✓ Real address, mail received and scanned | Unrepresented actors who still want a contact line |
City and province only is the safe floor — it satisfies the privacy rule and nothing more. The agent's address is the cleaner answer when you have an agent, because it gives a real, reachable point of contact without exposing your home. The fourth row exists for the actor who falls between those: self-represented, privacy-conscious, and still wanting something better than "city only, email me." It's a real Toronto or Vancouver street address — not your home, and not a PO box.
If you don't have an agent yet
This is the gap nobody names clearly. The standard guidance — including Google's AI Overview — says use your agent's business address. That instruction quietly assumes you have an agent. Most actors, for a meaningful stretch of their working life, don't. If you're unrepresented or self-represented, the fallback everyone points to simply isn't available to you, and the advice loops back to "just put your city" — which leaves you with no reliable contact point on a document whose entire job is to get you contacted.
A dedicated business street address closes that loop. It's a real address in Toronto or Vancouver that receives and forwards your mail, without being your home and without looking like a PO box on the page. To be precise about what this is and isn't: it's a privacy-and-contact tool, not a costume. It doesn't claim residency for you, it doesn't manufacture credentials, and it isn't a way to pretend to be something you're not. It does one specific thing — it lets an unrepresented actor put a clean, reachable line where the home address would otherwise go.
If you're not sure whether your current contact line is quietly working against you, Auteur has a 30-second self-check for actors — it walks through what's on your resume header and flags whether your address is doing the privacy and reachability job, or filtering you out at the paper stage.
What else to keep off your acting resume
The address is the line people ask about most, but it isn't the only detail that doesn't belong on a document that travels this widely. The same guidance that covers the address is consistent on the rest of the list. Keep these off an acting resume:
- Exact street address — city and province only, as covered above.
- SIN or SSN — never on a resume. Agencies and productions collect tax information through their own onboarding once you're working, not from a public-facing document.
- Date of birth or exact age — playing-age range is the relevant field, not your birthday.
- Exact weight — height is standard; precise weight is not expected and dates the document.
- Personal social media handles — link a professional presence (an IMDb page, an Actors Access or Casting Workbook profile, a demo reel) rather than a personal account.
What does belong: your name, union status (ACTRA, UBCP/ACTRA, SAG-AFTRA, or non-union), playing-age range, height, contact email and phone, training, and credits — theatre, film, television, and background performer work organized the way the industry expects. The contact block at the top is where the address question lives, and it's the one detail most actors get wrong by defaulting to the address where they actually live.
Frequently asked questions
Do you put your address on an acting resume?
Not your full home address — that's the one consistent rule. The accepted format is your city and province only (for example, Toronto, ON or Vancouver, BC). If you're represented, the convention is to use your agent's business address instead. If you're unrepresented and want a reachable contact point without exposing your home, a dedicated business street address fills that role.
Do I need to put my full address on a Canadian resume? No. On an acting resume specifically, the guidance is explicit that the full street address and postal code should be left off — city and province is the standard. A resume that travels through public breakdowns and submission chains is the wrong place for an exact address. General-purpose Canadian resumes follow similar privacy logic, but the acting context makes it sharper because of how widely the document circulates.
What is a professional email address for actors? A clean address built from your name — ideally the name you work under — on a standard mail provider, with no birth year, nicknames, or unrelated handles. It should match the name on your resume, headshot, and casting profiles so a casting director or agent connects them instantly. Treat the email line with the same care as the address line: it's part of the contact block that decides whether you're easy to reach.
What do you put on an actor's resume? Name, union status, playing-age range, height, a contact email and phone, and a location line (city and province, an agent's address, or a dedicated business address). Then training, and credits grouped by medium — theatre, film, television, and background performer work — followed by special skills. Keep off it anything that doesn't help someone cast or contact you: exact address, SIN, date of birth, exact weight, and personal social accounts.
Bottom line
The rule on a Canadian acting resume is settled: never the full home street address. City and province if that's all you've got; your agent's business address if you're represented. The honest gap is the unrepresented actor — pointed at an agency address they don't have, and left with a location line that can't actually receive anything.
A dedicated street address in Toronto or Vancouver closes that gap without crossing any line: your home stays off every document that leaves your hands, it isn't a PO box, and there's a real place mail can land. If you want to see whether your current resume header is helping you or quietly filtering you out, run Auteur's 30-second self-check for actors — it's built for exactly this question.