Former actor Frank Hansen has crossed into the talent management industry after identifying what he believes is a niche in the market.
“When I was an actor, through my dealings with my peers and colleagues there was always so much talk of ‘my agent doesn’t get me’ or ‘my agent doesn’t speak my language,’” he tells IF from his Melbourne office. “Because generally talent agents don’t come from an acting or an arts background. They tend to come from a more legal or accounting and, sometimes, production background, but certainly not from as much as an acting background as what actors would like. That made me realise there was this hole in the market for agents who ‘get’ actors.”
Hansen, who worked in advertising before becoming an actor, says he always knew acting wasn’t a permanent career for him and strived instead to “be a part of the business.”
After making the decision to make the move into talent management, he worked with a highly regarded management company (which he declines to name) for two and a half years to get the necessary experience to break out on his own.
The result is Hansen Creative Management, which now operates out of both Sydney and Melbourne.
“It’s going really well,” Hansen says. “There’s been a lot of interest particularly from colleagues who, like I said, who are a bit lost with their own management and want an agent who can speak their language. It’s actually been extraordinarily popular as a business model in the start-up and I had to be very mindful that I wasn’t just going to take a bunch of my friends.”
Hansen currently has 22 clients and says he aims to keep the numbers fairly low in order to enable him to execute a hands-on management style.
“I’ve accumulated an idea in my head of all the great aspects of management that I had when I was an actor and conglomerated them into one management company,” he says.
“I represent a really niche market in the fact that I really like working on the craft of acting with the actors themselves, and I think that’s something that’s not done enough out there in the industry.”
For more information, visit Hansen's website at http://www.hansencreative.com.au/