The hardest thing about a career in the performing arts is the time spent not actually performing. Someone once said to me – ‘acting is the best job in the world, being an actor is not’. Of course there are actors who just hop from one job to the next but that is actually quite rare and the majority of people have down time. It can be days, weeks, months or sometimes even years so you need to be prepared for this possibility – to have other skills so you can do a different job too. Staying positive is the best thing you can do when you are out of work. I am lucky and have generally enjoyed all the “in between” jobs I’ve had, but I have friends for whom it has been soul destroying.
Also you need to be able to take rejection. You may never know why you didn’t get a job but learning to dust yourself off, accept it and move on is vital in this business. It’s so easy to dwell on the ‘what ifs’ but actually if you can take something positive from a potentially negative situation this can really help! (For example, saying to yourself ‘I may not have got the job but actually I got to work on my audition technique or got to meet a new casing director…’)
Being a performer is hard – you miss birthdays, weddings, Christmases, holidays. You can’t just ‘be ill’ – the show must go on. Be prepared to make sacrifices!
The hardest thing of all is that nowadays so many people want to be performers (or to be famous) so there is already a huge amount of competition before you even start.