A talent agency is an enterprise that works with and/or manages people of a specific trade or a variety of trades, and acts as an intermediary between their talent pool and those seeking to fill roles to which these people are suited. These can range from small agencies filling openings for local commercial and TV work to the Hollywood mega-agencies that represent the biggest actors, writers and directors in movies, television and other media.
Some talent agencies act as exclusive representatives of their talent pool, signing them to a client/manager contract and focusing on keeping these clients employed, taking a percentage of their earnings as payment. They stay on top of what jobs are available and submit their clients for that work, lining up auditions when necessary. These agencies play an active role in finding and developing their clients, as the more work the clients generate, the more money is in turn earned by the agency.
Other agencies have a non-exclusive, non-contractual relationship with their talent, as their clients are the companies or entities looking to hire that talent. These can be a standard casting agency, hired by a studio or production company to cast the various roles needed for a specific project, or an agency that is signed by one or a number of venues to bring performers to those venues in exchange for a booking fee. These agencies may work with the management-based agencies whenever the sought-after performer has such representation.
The larger Hollywood-based agencies, such as Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and William Morris Endeavor, fill a number of roles in the industry, having separate departments within the agency concentrating on different fields, such as writing, acting and music as well as departments focusing on movies or TV. The more talent these agencies can acquire creates a greater amount of leverage and power that they can wield in contract negotiations and in securing work for their lesser-known clients.
Another role these larger agencies can play in generating work is to take clients from their various fields and "package" them together into a single project to pitch to the studios, such as a movie or television series. For example, the agency can take a screenplay written by one of its represented writers and attach other talent, most likely an actor and/or director, and present those elements as a package deal when looking to get a greenlight for the project, and charge the studio a package fee instead of standard commissions for each client.