Photoplayer Hater

A career usually gets you paid for the thing you are hired to do. Unless you are freelance, you are spending your time doing the thing your job is called. With acting you are usually freelance and even if you have a permanent gig you aren't acting 40 hours a week. Since most of your time is not spent acting, you will find your time filled with other related chores which you may not find as pleasurable.

Finding Roles

To an extent agents can find you jobs, but most actors admit it's more of a partnership rather than boss-employee relationship. Agents only have so much time for you and only know so much. So most actors find they don't get as much work as they'd like or they take on part of the job-seeking tasks themselves. If you don't have an agent you will have to do 100% of this work.

Creating Roles

The actual playing of the character only take places when you are on stage or between somebody calling action and cut. Before this you need to put in work to get a credible character together that will later materialize. This involves back stories, research, interviews, and imaginative brainstorming. Not acting per se but still something you need to do.

Developing A Character

So you have a character you feel great about, now you have to get on your feet. A character's life needs to become rote to you. This will require time for rehearsing until you get it right. This will be anything from you running lines and practicing stage business all by yourself to dress rehearsals with the whole cast and the director.

Practice, Study, Classes

Aside from the work you do for characters in roles you land, you will also be doing perpetual acting education. There is always more to learn, things you can get better at, and other techniques to master. You will be in an acting class a good portion of your life and if not you will be at least be working on your craft as often as you can.

A Job That Actually Pays Money

Along with acting not taking up most of your time, it also won't likely be the largest source of your income. Beyond the other acting-related activities, you will also have to spend time doing things just to pay the bills. You may be a part-time server at a restaurant, bar tender, or have an office job with a lenient boss, but most of you will have to supplement your acting jobs with real jobs.

It's the nature of acting that most of what you do is not acting. It's not a matter of fighting it, rather coming to terms with it. Even if you do find yourself being paid well to act you'll soon find most of your time is spent fighting off paparazzi instead of acting. The truth is that actor is a misleading job title, it should be more like perpetual-student-and-character-creator-player. Rolls right off the tongue, I know.