Should You Make Acting Your Career?

I know a lot of actors and they are never on the same page in their careers. While one or two of them might be doing well and booking jobs consistently, there are other actors who haven't landed an audition, much less booked a job, in quite some time.

There is plenty of self-doubt and hard times in the acting world. With all of the competition for parts in Hollywood, sometimes you have to ask yourself one question:

Should I choose acting as my career path?

The simple answer to this question is "No".

In general, only a small portion of actors earn enough money as actors to make a living. This does not mean they are household names or big stars loved by the public. It just means they are earning enough money to make acting their main job.

The not so simple answer to the question is..."Yes. You should make acting your career choice if you can't imagine doing anything else with your life." 

A career as an actor is never going to be an easy journey. The amount of competition is extremely high and you will need to perform at your highest level at all times to have a chance to succeed. Can you handle that kind of pressure or are you better off choosing a more traditional career path?

Acting is a career that needs to be worked on each day. You don't necessarily need to act on a daily basis. You do need to check casting sites, submit yourself for parts, attend workshops and acting classes, network with other actors and try and create your own projects. Acting is a skill that needs to be practiced and performed on a regular basis. I try and update my blog on a weekly basis. I don't always succeed but the desire is always there. Even when I post an update, my brain is already thinking about the topic of my next post. I write on a daily basis and my work ranges from medical articles to job search tips to cooking with seasonings to creating compelling social media updates for businesses. If I go a day or two without writing, it takes me a little while to get back in the groove. Acting is the same way so you have to decide if your career path involves exercising your acting muscles on a daily basis.

Finally, you have to decide how far you want to take acting as a career. Some people are happy being known as one of the best actors in their hometown. Their place of residence might consist of 1000 people or 100,000 people. If that is the place where you want to try and build an acting career, it will be harder because there are not as many opportunities on a daily basis to book work. If you really want to maximize your potential as a working actor, you need to move to Los Angeles or New York. Even cities like Chicago and New Orleans that host movie and television productions on a regular basis only have so much available work to offer an actor. You have to decide if making the move, and leaving behind your family and friends, is a good career choice for you in the long run.

The decision about making acting your career choice is completely up to you. There are many people that give advice and offer encouraging words. When it comes to answering the question about choosing acting as your career path, you are the only person that can provide the final answer.

This teenager decided he wanted to be an actor at an early age.