What are the pros and cons of being an actor?

• Variety of acting opportunities. An actor is a professional who portrays different characters in various productions. Actors may work in theater, TV, film, commercials, radio, and even video games.

  Their job is often to take guidance from the director while adhering to the script. They must memorize their character's dialogue from the screenplay, radio play, or play script.

• Acting is a collaborative profession. Actors often attend rehearsals with other actors, the director, and other key crew members of a production. Here they practice playing out the scenes of the script and sometimes have the opportunity to improvise or adlib and go off-script.

  Working with other actors, actresses, and a wide variety of creative professionals makes an actor's career very fulfilling.

• Most actors find their profession to be fun. Actors get to participate in the creation of fictional stories. In other words, they play make-believe as a profession. Bringing stories and interesting characters to life is very satisfying and often enjoyable.

  Actors also have the opportunity to travel for their work and get to meet all sorts of fascinating people during their productions.

• Acting is a creative profession. Acting is inherently creative. Most jobs that involve creativity also involve a fair amount of work that can be considered not creative. For the most part, this is not the case with actors.

  Any time they work, they get to be in a creative mindset and don't have to deal with mundane tasks nearly as much as those in most other professions.

Cons:

• Most actors don't make a lot of money. The average salary of an actor in the United States is $42,214 per year. Some can make even less than this, and most have to hold down other jobs while pursuing their acting careers.

  The actors who become extremely famous may make millions of dollars per production. However, these are few and far between.

• Moving to Los Angeles or New York. These are by no means the only places you can become an actor. Chicago, for instance, also has a thriving theater scene. However, if you want to break into TV and Film, Los Angeles is probably still the surest route.

  If you want to act on Broadway, you need to go to Broadway, so move to New York City. These two cities are expensive and competitive.

• Go on auditions and get rejected. Auditioning is one of the hardest parts of being an actor. You are liable to go on hundreds of auditions and be rejected most of the time.

  Rejection isn't the case for every actor, but learning to deal with rejection and finding the fortitude to keep going is essential for most actors.