Paul Newman Quotes

I look at old performance videos now, and it's really funny - I thought I was such a gangster!

But I had a strong reaction to my first three albums and I struggle with them now, as an adult. It's very much the same as looking at your teenage photos in high school.

I have never seen any of my work, I can't watch it because I am ultra critical. We all have little mannerisms that people may love about us, but can be embarrassing. Perhaps we got teased about them as kids and we may not like them ourselves. That is what it is like for me, I can't look at myself on screen even if the audience loves what I am doing.

Sometimes I'll watch an old movie on television and, once in a while, one of mine, such as April Showers, will come on and I'll watch it. And you know something? I'm always amazed at what a lousy actress I was. I guess in the old days we just got by on glamour.

All you do is you go back to the Maida Vale Studios at BBC in London, and it feels like you're in a spaceship. It feels like you're in 2001 or something like that. It's massive and well constructed and highly technologically advanced and occupied by these wise scientists, engineers, and producers. Listening to it, it just doesn't sound like me - that's a younger self that didn't know who he was or what he was doing. I can't identify with a nebulous cloud.

Normally I can't watch myself at all, and watching myself makes me cringe, and I cover my face, and it's very hard to watch.

I hate my feet. I don't like my hands, either: they're like lions' paws. When I was in the Boosh, in a catsuit and gold heels, I was constantly thinking, 'I hate the way I look.' I should have just enjoyed myself, because that was as good as it was going to get.

I do always look back and feel faintly embarrassed by anything I've done in the past. I think that's not a terrible thing, because if you don't do that, how are you growing and moving forward?

I couldn't stand seeing myself on the screen.

I hate watching myself on TV.

I listened to a clip someone had put up of me singing 'I Am What I Am' in the musical 'La Cage aux Folles.' I thought I was absolutely dreadful. It's like when you see photos of yourself at parties - at the time you thought you looked so cool and glamorous but you just look a bit drunk.

The problem is I don't have respect for the films I make after I've made them. I detach myself and get embarrassed when I watch them later.

I don't really like to watch myself.

When you shoot a scene, you remember every moment. You remember when your head went down, your head went up. You don't see little quirks, little eye movements, little lip movements. Once again, you become completely vain when you're watching it in a way that you weren't when you were shooting it. And the vanity, what it makes you focus on are everything that has nothing to do with the scene and everything to do with your own ego.

I really can't watch myself. I just get too in my head about it and start overthinking everything.

It's bizarre. In middle school, I thought girls were running away from me, so when they ask for a picture now, I'm like, 'Really, what?!'

Your peers when you're a teenager will always be the keepers of your embarrassment and regret. It was one of life's great injustices, that you can move on and be accomplished and happy, but the moment you see someone from high school you immediately become the person you were then, not the person you are now.

The future is there... looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become.

The growing pains of being an actor, that was a little frustrating at times because you feel like you have great capacity to do many things. And yet there seems to be a misunderstanding about who you are and what you're trying to do. And that requires patience, and people eventually will understand.

I remember trying to work out like crazy to get rid of all of my womanly features because I thought they made me fat.

As an artist, you're never happy with anything you do. It's part of the process.

I was trying so hard. I would memorize the entire script, then I'd be lipping everybody's lines while they were talking. When I watch those episodes, it's disgusting. My performances were horrible.

Sometimes I like to watch videos of myself and see how confident I was.

I felt like a dork growing up.

I cringe a lot when I look at my early talk-show experiences.