hello! i just happened to notice your dream job!! i am currently studying to be a theoretical physicist (with more of a focus on dark matter/alt. universes), so i think its really cool! i hardly ever meet anyone who even knows what that is! ^!^
Cool! Yeah, things have evolved a long way though, my main interest is Quantum computing, but I recently did a course on General Relativity and loved every bit of it so who knows.
Either way, something to realize about being a physicist, that I have come to realize by talking to academics and the like, is that it's a very difficult and not a very stable job, in a way the physicists are the "Artists" of science, in that it's one of the hardest sciences to find any sort of job in. Most people who study physics, for example, go to finance because there's simply more jobs there. So my plan is to work in compsci for 2 years before pursuing my physics career, so that if, for whatever reason, I cannot find a job as a theoretical physicist, I will still have the experience and skills to make it in the world.
Also side note: They recently discovered neutrinos have mass, there is some investigation as to whether neutrinos could actually be the mysterious dark matter, it makes a lot of sense to me, considering dark matter is neutral and very invisible, just like neutrinos.