About

GCM (Gail Cowan Management Ltd) is a professional actors' agency based in Auckland, New Zealand. GCM has a fantastic reputation within the industry, one of competence, care, and dedication. The agency aims to create an authentic and collaborative environment through developing a genuine understanding of our clients. Gail has been an actor's agent since 1983, primarily servicing the market of feature films, theatre, TV dramas, corporate, voice-over work, and commercials.

Our team have a great understanding of actors' abilities and can tailor pitches to suit; we work collaboratively as a team and aim to be across all projects and clients. We provide our actors with advice, recommendations as well as offer workshopping or practice self-tapes in our studio. We consider theatre to be an important tool in actor development, which is why we encourage our actors to be actively involved with productions and show our support by not taking a commission, and only occasionally charging a token fee to cover our time and costs.

GCM has a separate division focusing on our younger talent, Chrysalis by GCM. We have an internationally recognised reputation for developing young talent and our aim is provide the industry with an elite and boutique agency for children and teens.

At the GCM office, we have our own fully equipped studio and editing facilities, which allow us to record our own audition tapes at very short notice. We introduced the studio in 2013 after noticing the growing interest in New Zealand actors. It took many years of hard work and dedication but our tapes now have an international reputation for quality and great performance. Our studio produces high quality, fast-turnaround audition tapes for our talent, with ready access to a professional actor/director, who will read, film, direct and edit. We can also provide workshopping and constructive feedback for developing actors, or those who wish to run lines before an audition. 

Tapes from our studio have had numerous international hits, such as Luciane Buchanan in Netflix's 'The Night Agent' S1-2, Stacey Leilua in the series about Dwayne Johnson's life - 'Young Rock' S1-3, Gary Young in Starz series 'Outlander' S3 and 'Warrior S3', Bryony Skillington in S1-2 of the Binge series 'Strife', Duane Wichman-Evans Jnr in 'Avatar: The Way of the Water' and more recently 'Avatar 3: Fire and Ash', Albert Latailakepa in the Disney series 'The Artful Dodger' S1-2.

Our other major international castings include Jen Van Epps in 'M3GAN', 'M3GAN 2.0' and 'Time Bandits', Nell Fisher in 'Stranger Things S5' and also starring alongside Elijah Wood in the film 'Bookworm', Nathalie Morris in Stan series 'Bump' S1-5, Lara Macgregor in Netflix series 'Clickbait', Xana Tang in Netflix/ABC series The Letdown S1-2, Dave Fane in the US film 'Next Goal Wins' and US series 'Our Flag Means Death', Taika Waititi in the film Australian 'FING!', Allan Henry in ‘Cocaine Bear’ and 'Minecraft', Thomasin McKenzie in ‘JoJo Rabbit’, 'Totally Completely Fine' and more, Davida McKenzie in the Australian films 'Leviticus' and 'Speedway', María Dupláa in the Australian mini-series 'Plum', Tane Williams-Accra in US film 'Fantasy Island', Cameron Brown in both 'Alien: Earth' and 'Predator: Badlands', and many more international wins.

Locally, GCM talent feature across nearly all major film and television productions, in both leading, supporting and guest roles. In major New Zealand television, Antonia Prebble played the pivotal role in 6 seasons 'Westside', as well as co-lead in 2 seasons of 'Double Parked', winning Best Actress numerous times at the NZ Screen Awards. Dominic Ona-Ariki was the lead detective role in 3 seasons of 'One Lane Bridge', for which he won Best Actor at NZSA, more recently he has been core cast in both 'Double Parked' and 'Secrets at Red Rocks' and has booked several roles in Australian projects too. Acushla-Tara Kupe co-led 2 seasons of 'The Gone', with Scott Wills also in a major role, the series aired on TVNZ, BBC4 and on Acorn TV and received rave reviews. Maaka Pohatu recently led the zany sci-fi comedy series 'Warren's Vortex' and played a core cast role on 'Happiness' alongside Rebecca Gibney, Bronwyn Bradley and RV Quijano. On 'Shortland Street', we have had a number of core cast over the many years of the show, currently have Jane Wills and Mo Nasir as core cast, with Sally Martin recently departing after 14 years. In 2026 we will see Ana Scotney in a major role in the series 'Crackheads', and Amelia Reynolds in the Netflix miniseries 'East of Eden'. Notable roles in the recently released season of 'Spartacus: House of Asher' include Simon Arblaster, Graham Vincent, and Pamela Sidhu, among others. Other notable roles include Emma Fenton in Filthy Rich S1-2, Irene Wood in Go Girls S1-5, Jodie Hillock in The Bad Seed, and Rebecca Gibney and John Bach in Under the Vines S1-3.

GCM represents leading talent in many New Zealand made feature films, including the upcoming films 'Shearing the Love' with Dan Musgrove, and Tabatha Killick in 'Black Sheeps', and Emma Leonard and Ryan O'Kane in 'Zombucha!'. Recent releases running the 2026 film circuit include 'Marama', led by Ariāna Osborne, and 'Mum, I'm Alien Pregnant' led by Hannah Lynch, and the low budget horror 'The Weedeaters' which was created and lead by Alice-May Connolly, Samuel Austin and Finnius Teppett is finding an international audience through the horror circuit. Other major film success include the beautiful performance by Anapela Polata'ivao in Tinā, for which she won Best Actress in a Feature at the NZ Screen Awards, and Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne in Lee Tamahori's feature film 'The Convert' which premiered at TIFF, Ana Scotney in Millie Lies Low, Xana Tang in Princess of Chaos, the breath-taking film 'Cousins' led by Tanea Heke, Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne and Ana Scotney, and Elizabeth Hawthorne in 'The Moon is Upside Down' directed by Loren Taylor.