Damon Herriman, main picture, is one of almost a dozen Australians who have secured roles in this year’s Hollywood crop of pilot series, including, from left to right, Isabelle Cornish, Sarah Snook, Indiana Evans, Don Hany and Natasha Bassett. Damon Herriman, main picture, is one of almost a dozen Australians who have secured roles in this year’s Hollywood crop of pilot series, including, from left to right, Isabelle Cornish, Sarah Snook, Indiana Evans, Don Hany and Natasha Bassett.

Every year the Hollywood machine churns out more than 70 drama and comedy pilots, the ''crop'' from which television network executives hope to skim the cream.

Australian actors have a track record of doing well in the US pilot season - the period between February and March when most US pilots are cast - but few are as lucky as 26-year-old Sisters of War actress Sarah Snook.

Snook is in some ways still an emerging star in her own country. But in the US for her first pilot season she secured a lead in the new US series Clementine.

The pilot is for US network ABC and in it Snook will play a psychic, Clementine Ross, whose life shifts unexpectedly when she ''decides to stop running from her past''.

She joins almost a dozen Australian actors working in the US who have secured roles in this year's pilot crop so far. They include INXS mini-series star Damon Herriman, Offspring's Don Hany, Home and Away's Indiana Evans and The Glades' Matt Passmore.

Not every pilot gets the green light, though it is increasingly common for US networks to order at least 13 episodes in some cases. Under The Dome and the US remake of Secrets and Lies, for example, were given ''full series'' orders.

Herriman, who was seen most recently in Australia playing the role of band manager Chris Murphy in the mini-series INXS: Never Tear Us Apart, has secured a role in one of the most anticipated new US projects: Battle Creek, from the creator of Breaking Bad, writer-producer Vince Gilligan.

It is being produced by Sony Pictures Television for CBS.

Former McLeod's Daughters star Passmore, meanwhile, has been cast in a new pilot from Nip/Tuck and Suits producer Sean Jablonski, which will be filmed in Atlanta.

Another major casting puts former Offspring heart-throb Don Hany in a new US medical drama pilot, Warriors.

Hany, who secured the role before even getting a US agent, also starred in the ABC/HBO co-production Serangoon Road. He will play a trauma surgeon in the series, which is set in a fictional version of the US military hospital, the Walter Reed Military Medical Centre.

Former Home and Away star Evans has secured a role in the US remake of Secrets and Lies, an Australian murder mystery drama that is screening on the Ten Network. That role puts Evans in an enviable position, working with US film actors Juliette Lewis and Ryan Phillipe, who are starring in the project.

Former Rush star Ashley Zukerman has landed a role in the series Manhattan.

It tells the story of the assembly of the world's first atomic bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Isabelle Cornish, meanwhile, will star in the US remake of the Dutch series Vuurzee, which is titled Sea of Fire.

The series is set in a small town which is torn apart when three girls appear in a pornographic film.

Cornish will play the student daughter of the town's sheriff.

Actress Natasha Bassett has secured a role in the Fox pilot Here's Your Damn Family.

Australians dominated last year's pilot season, with roles going to Luke Mitchell, Bob Morley, Chris Egan, Lincoln Lewis and Luke Bracey among others.