The phrase comes up in two places. The first is the audition room, where a casting director hands you pages you have never seen and asks you to read. The second is the acting class, where cold reading is taught as a skill of its own, because the actor who reads well off the page gets further, faster, in almost every audition they will ever have.
Nobody walks into a cold read expecting a finished performance. The bar is lower and stranger than that: can you make text you met ninety seconds ago sound like something a person would say, to someone in particular, for a reason?
When you will be asked to cold read
Less often than you might fear, and more often than you might hope. Most screen auditions now send sides a day or more ahead, so a true cold read is rarer than it was. It still happens at open calls, at some theater auditions, in commercial rooms where the copy changes on the day, in callbacks where they hand you a new scene to see how you take it, and in class. It also happens in disguise: the audition where the pages were revised overnight and you are handed the new version at the door is a cold read, whether anyone calls it that or not.
There is also the table read, where the whole cast reads a script aloud for the first time. That is a cousin of the cold read with lower stakes and better snacks; see what a table read is.
What casting is actually watching for
They know you have not learned it. What they are watching is how you think, and a cold read shows that more clearly than a polished one. In rough order, they are looking at four things.
Whether you are talking to someone. The most common failure in a cold read is reading the words to the page. An actor who lifts the line off the paper and puts it into the reader's face, even imperfectly, is doing the job.
Whether you found a want. Even a rough sense of what the character is after (to get an apology, to get out of the room, to be believed) gives every line a direction. Without one, you are reciting. If the term is new, here is what an objective is in acting.
Whether you noticed the turns. Most scenes change direction at least once: a piece of news lands, a tactic fails, someone gives in. If your read changes when the scene changes, you are reading for meaning and not just sound.
Whether you can take a note. Many cold reads are followed by an adjustment ("try it again, but this time you already know she's lying"). The second read tells them more than the first, because it shows whether you can change your mind quickly and commit to something new.
How to do a cold read, step by step
If you get any time at all with the pages, spend it in this order. Even two minutes covers the first three.
1. Find the facts. Who is in the scene, where are you, and what just happened? Skim for the scene heading and anything the other character says about you; those are your given circumstances, and they make half your choices for you.
2. Decide what you want. One simple, active sentence. "I want him to stay." "I want her to admit she knew." Pick it fast and commit; a wrong choice played fully is more watchable than a right one played vaguely.
3. Find the turn. Look for the moment the scene changes. Mark it with a pencil if you can. That is where your read should shift.
4. Read the first and last lines twice. They are the two lines people remember, and they are the ones most worth having off the page.
5. In the room, use the eye-scan-speak rhythm. Look down, take in as much of the next thought as you can hold, look up, and say it to the reader. Then go back down. Keep your thumb on the side of the page next to where you are, so you can find your place without hunting.
6. Listen when the reader talks. The temptation is to spend their lines reading ahead to yours. Resist it. Your next line is a reaction to theirs, and if you did not hear it, it will sound like it.
Common cold read mistakes
Racing is the big one. Nerves speed you up, and a cold read at speed sounds like a cold read. Let yourself take the time to find the line and look up; a beat of silence while you look at the reader reads as thought, not as a stumble.
The second is apologizing. If you fumble a word, keep going in character, the way a person does in real life when they trip over a sentence. Stopping to say sorry breaks the scene and draws attention to the mistake nobody else minded.
The third is playing the mood instead of the want. If you decide a scene is "sad," you will play sad on every line, and it will be flat by the second page. Decide what you want from the other person and let the sadness, or whatever it turns out to be, take care of itself.
The last is overcompensating for not being memorized by trying to be. An actor who looks up for long stretches and then loses their place is less effective than one who is plainly reading but present. Holding the pages is expected; hiding behind them is the problem.
How to practice cold reading
Cold reading improves with repetition faster than almost any other acting skill, because it is partly a reading skill: how much text your eye can take in at a glance and hold while you speak it.
The simplest routine is ten minutes a day, out loud, from material you have never read. Plays are ideal because they are almost all dialogue. Take a scene, pick a character, and read it to a chair, a photo or, best of all, a friend reading the other part. Each day, try to take in a little more per glance. After a few weeks most people can hold a full sentence, and some can hold two.
Practice the analysis at speed, too. Give yourself sixty seconds with a new scene and say out loud who you are, what you want and where the scene turns. Then read it. Over time those sixty seconds start happening on their own while you skim, which is exactly what a casting room needs from you.
Finally, practice taking notes. Have a friend give you a random adjustment after your first read ("you're secretly in love with him," "you're late for something") and read it again. The ability to change a performance on one sentence of direction is what callbacks are made of.
Cold read versus a prepared audition
When you have sides in advance, it is no longer a cold read, and the expectations rise with the time you were given. You are still usually allowed to hold the pages, but casting will expect clear choices, a real relationship with the other character, and enough familiarity that you are looking at the reader far more than at the paper. The steps above still apply; you just get to go deeper on each of them. For the full version of that process, see how to prepare for an audition.
More questions
Do you have to memorize a cold read?
No. A cold read is by definition unprepared, so you hold the pages and read from them. What you should do is look up from the page as often as you can, so casting sees your face and not the top of your head.
How much time do you get for a cold read?
It varies. Sometimes you get the pages in the waiting room ten or fifteen minutes before you go in; sometimes you get them in the room and start almost immediately. If you are offered a minute to look it over, take it.
Is a cold read the same as a sight read?
In acting the two are often used interchangeably, both meaning reading text you have not prepared. Sight reading is the more common term in music, where it means performing a score at first sight.
Can you ask questions before a cold read?
Yes, briefly. Asking who you are talking to, or what just happened before the scene, is reasonable and shows you are thinking like an actor. Keep it to one or two questions.
How do you get better at cold reading?
Practice reading aloud every day from material you have never seen, preferably plays and screenplays. Take one sentence in with your eyes, look up, say it to someone, then go back to the page. Speed comes from repetition.