Modeling auditions
There are always talent agencies around any city of size, if there is any level of performing arts industry in that city. As an actor who's trying to get started in the business of performance, these talent agencies often seem like a good place to start. After all, they will get your name out to casting directors, won't they? They will send you on big film auditions and theatre auditions with professional local companies, right? They'll distribute your headshot and your resume, make phone calls for you, put in a good word for you, find you gigs, and just generally be looking to get you work - won't they?
The thing is, I imagine a lot of actors who go to register with these talent agencies imagine something a lot different than what they're getting. They are having visions of Joey's talent agent in Friends, Esther or Estelle or whatever her name is, sitting behind a desk, puffing away at a cigarette, and giving Joey a call to send him on casting auditions or get him gigs.
But that's a talent agent. That's being one of a relatively small number of clients that the agent knows well, relatively speaking, and that the agent expects to get a pretty big kickback from - because the agent believes that actor has potential to get cast, and is willing to put the time in to find him or her, say, movie auditions for A-list movies. It's worth the trouble to them because the payoff could be so big.
These talent agencies work with small-time actors and they aren't interested in knowing you personally. It's because they have so many actors registered with them that they have to assume everyone's a beginner, a relatively no-talent schmoe. And that may not be true, but how are they going to sit there and sort out the real thing from all the chaff: the stage moms who want to register their toddlers for baby modeling, the starry-eyed squealing sixteen year old girls who want to be sent on auditions for teens for TV shows and end up on Buffy or something...there's just no way they're going to spend that time. So you may get gigs from these talent agencies, yes, but will they be particularly high-profile? Appropriate for you? Most of them will be commercials, extras in movies filmed locally, and small-time modeling. Good supplementary income for an actor, but you're not going to break into the biz that way.