By MARC GRASER, November 16, 1998

Aspiring actors battling for roles may not have to attack agents with armies of headshots and resumes anymore: CastNet.com is moving Hollywoodís casting couch into cyberspace.

The online casting service, launched out of a Studio City garage by five employees in 1995, is hoping to become the industry standard for casting in Hollywood.

For about $150 a year, actors can create a digital resume, posting up to eight headshots, a work history and film or streaming-video clips of performances on the CastNet system. The service also provides subscribers with an automatic postcard service, searchable breakdowns and an e-mail service.

If actors don`t have a personal computer, they also can input their materials through computers available at two remote stations throughout Los Angeles. CastNet plans to open three more stations by next year.

I know what actors go through, says CastNet co-chairman Thom Mount, a former president of Universal Studios. I know about the anxiety they have to be a one-man marketing department. We`re the actor`s advocate. That`s our motto. We save actors a lot of money. One photo on CastNet can be seen by thousands of sources. It has a global reach.

Although actors pay for the service, CastNet is free to talent agents, casting directors and producers.

Since its launch, CastNet has grown to 25 employees and now boasts 200 agents and casting directors, along with the Producers Guild of America`s 800 registered members, who regularly search the system`s database of more than 30,000 registered actors.

These aren`t aspiring actors, Mount says. Everybody on the system is a working actor. We don`t want to take actors who are not represented by agents or managers. We want the agents to know that the men and women on the system are working actors. All have SAG cards or are just about to get them.

There are about 144,000 union actors represented by the four main actors guilds in North America - SAG, AFTRA, Equity and ACTRA. There are at least 275,000 non-union actors in the Los Angeles area alone, according to the Entertainment Internet.

Although most of CastNet`s users are commercials casting directors, actors also have landed roles in episodic TV series, including CBS`s Jag, Fox`s The X-Files and ABC`s Dharma & Greg. Mount says about 9,600 actors were submitted for parts in the month of September alone.

Because we`re so fast, casting directors will call our office from the set of a television show and request a Chinese-American actor who speaks Spanish, Mount says. We`ll have somebody that fits that description.

Megan Foley, a commercials casting director in North Hollywood, has embraced CastNet`s paperless casting service, using it for two years, even when working from home.

It`s given me a lot of freedom, Foley says. It lets me prep from location or when I`m on vacation. I don`t have to wait so long to get pictures.

Her Megan Foley Casting has used the system to cast 1,200 commercials for clients including AT&T, Hertz, American Express, McDonald`s and Burger King.

If I put out a breakdown and put it out and it gets sent to agents, it usually takes five or six hours to get pictures back, Foley says. If I do it on CastNet, I can get pictures back in half an hour. Within an hour, I can see a couple hundred pictures.

Still, other agents are hesitant to use the system, Foley says. They`re either afraid of it or think not a lot of people are on it, she says. I wish more agents would use it.

Veteran Warner Bros. casting director Marion Dougherty and director Roland Joffe (The Killing Fields, The Mission) recently joined Castnet as advisers.

In September, financier Paul Kessler`s the Entertainment Internet acquired the fledgling CastNet.com to incorporate it into what it calls "the IndustryNet", an online entertainment network for industry professionals. Other sites featuring services similar to CastNet, to launch in 1999, are ProducersNet, LocationNet, CrewNet, ExtrasNet, DirectorNet, WriterNet, AnimationNet, CinematographerNet and PropNet, among others.

CastNet plans to move this month into larger offices in the Museum Square building on Wilshire Boulevard, adjacent to the Screen Actors Guild, and will open offices in Chicago, New York and London by late 1999.

I see Hollywood as the entertainment capital of the world, but Hollywood hasn`t, to date, been online, Kessler says. This is Hollywood getting onto the superhighway.