London Extra Agency began with a performer
London Extra Agency was founded in 2006 by a performer who understood the industry from both sides. Many of our original members knew the founder as Lisa West between 2006 and 2016. What began as a passion for creating opportunities for background artists grew into a successful business connecting thousands of performers with casting professionals and productions across the industry.
Creating opportunities differently
London Extra Agency was created to make it easier for productions to find the people they needed while creating genuine professional opportunities for performers.
The original LEA supplied performers for television, film, commercials, corporate productions, role-play and other professional work.
What began as a different approach to connecting performers with productions developed into a substantial working database and casting operation.
Over its original years of operation, thousands of performers registered with London Extra Agency and thousands of days of professional work were created and coordinated, including providing an actor for a recall for Harry Potter and a booking with Disney.
From workshops to large-scale casting
The early London Extra Agency also ran practical performer workshops.
For £50, performers could receive professional photographs together with approximately two hours of commercial-audition training, practical guidance and individual feedback.
As LEA grew, so did the scale and variety of the assignments it handled.
Some productions required individual or specialist casting. Others required substantial numbers of supporting artists.
One documented example was the St Albans CCTV trials, for which London Extra Agency supplied and coordinated large numbers of performers.
Running assignments like these meant much more than finding names in a database. It meant understanding production requirements, finding appropriate people, confirming availability, communicating information, responding to changes and keeping large numbers of people organised.
Built from both sides of the casting process
The original London Extra Agency wasn’t developed from a theory of how casting worked.
It developed through doing the work.
LEA's founder had experienced the industry as a supporting artist trying to obtain work, later as a professionally represented actor working in paid film, television and commercial roles, and then from the other side — working directly with productions, finding performers and coordinating casting and supporting-artist bookings.
On major assignments she attended bookings, worked alongside production teams, coordinated performers on set and became involved in increasingly specific casting requirements.
That experience shaped the way London Extra Agency worked then — and the way it has been rebuilt today.
Fairness mattered then. It matters now.
From the beginning, London Extra Agency believed professional work should be treated professionally.
Fair rates, clear communication and prompt payment mattered.
So did creating opportunities without unnecessarily taking money from the people doing the work.
That principle remains part of the new London Extra Agency.
Performers pay a straightforward membership subscription after their free trial rather than surrendering a percentage of every job they complete through the platform.
No commission is deducted from their work.
For casting professionals, access is free. There are no agency fees and no commission on jobs.
The work hasn’t changed as much as the tools have
Casting still means finding the right people, establishing who is genuinely available, collecting the information production needs, dealing with changes and keeping everybody informed.
What has changed is how much of that repetitive administration needs to be done manually.
Speed matters in casting.
Suitable performers can receive opportunities and availability requests by email and WhatsApp, helping productions reach people quickly wherever they are.
Selected performers can respond to an availability request with a simple click. Their responses are organised directly within the casting professional’s LEA dashboard, with intelligent email updates available without creating a flood of individual messages.
Fast for the performer. Organised for casting.
You can check availability, confirm bookings, collect information, request current look photographs, ask for specific video auditions, choose replacements, check pre-shoot readiness, manage bookings and collect invoices on this platform.
London Extra Agency, rebuilt for today
Roughly a decade after the original London Extra Agency closed, the technology finally exists to take the principles behind the original business much further.
The new LEA combines the experience behind the original agency with modern technology, efficient communication and tools that help performers and casting professionals manage their work directly.
It is designed around a simple principle:
Everything you want from an agency. Without the agency.
For casting professionals, that means powerful tools and administrative support without surrendering control.
For performers, it means a professional profile, access to suitable opportunities, fast communication and support through the administrative stages of a job — without commission being deducted from their earnings.
A new way of doing something we’ve been doing for years.
The technology is new.
The purpose isn’t.