How should I set up 2 separate business activities in France?

I’m looking to set up 2 concurrent but separate freelance business activities in France.

1. Virtual assistant services: admin tasks, proofreading and copywriting
2. Regular appearances as a performance artist and dancer

From my research so far, I understand that:

1. I probably cannot (and wouldn’t necessarily want to) run these two business activities as part of the same structure as businesses seem to be registered by type of work. Is this correct?
2. The auto-entrepreneur scheme may well have too low a limit for either activity and I’m not sure if it takes into account other sources of income. Also, on the side of business expenses, I understand that there is no possibility of claiming these, which is not ideal as both activities have significant running costs. Have I overlooked anything here and should in fact still consider auto-entrepreneur?
3. If auto-entrepreneur is not appropriate for me, I’d like your advice on how best to set up correctly and legally for these two business activities – EI, EIRL, EURL and portage salariale all seem to be possible options with pros and cons but it’s hard to grasp a concrete understanding on how each of them work and what the implications are.
4. Working from home – I rent a studio apartment, alone. I see no mention in my contract of not being allowed to carry out a business from here, would I run into any problems if I were to register a business from my home address?
5. I am already incurring business expenses associated with these two business activities. Am I able to claim costs incurred ahead of a business start date, and how does it all work?