Mackenzie Davis Quotes

If you're a stranger, and you've never met me before, I'll probably be more reserved and quiet. If you're my friend, you probably see the same stuff that you see me do onstage.

It's so much easier for me to talk about my life in front of two thousand people than it is one-to-one. I'm a real defensive person, because if you were sensitive in my neighborhood you were something to eat.

I never did well meeting strangers, so my favorite part of partying as a couple was that I didn't need to strike up conversation from scratch. If you've ever had to go out and meet new people on your own, you would understand. It can be a bit of an awkward situation. If you're already out at a party with someone you know, it takes that pressure off.

Just because you can leap off a drum kit doing a scissors kick while hitting a chord, people expect you to be an extrovert socially. But I'm not always comfortable with the idea of small talk at a party.

I am honestly very intimidated when I meet new people and they expect me to be the onscreen Vir. On stage, I say a lot of things I might never say in real life; I am never the life of the party. People are quite surprised to see that I am more of a quiet artiste off stage.

The stuff I do and say onstage I can do easily. As a performer, that comes easily. But being social offstage, it's not easy for me.

I'm not a very gregarious person. I can't bear attention being called to me in a public place, which is ridiculous in a business that pays you to be noticed.

People still make me nervous, but gradually over the years I've developed kind of like a public personality, so I can talk. I have my spiel, I have my stories.

I tend to avoid things like award shows and panels and interviews, not remotely because I feel I'm above them or wish to cultivate the image of the intriguing recluse. I'm just not very good at them.

Actually I don't choose to expose myself in public. I choose to compete; the other side just comes with the package.

If I acted like I did onstage in normal life, everyone would probably hate me.

The scariest thing is to go into a new situation for myself, and yet I have a job where I do that every few months, meet a hundred new people, and then have to perform in a very highly pressurized environment.

In regard to performing, it couldn't be funnier that I ended up being an actor, because I'm really shy. Unless I'm really comfortable with a person.

I think what's universal is the idea of auditioning. It's something that you do in every kind of job market. You audition every time you go on a date, you audition at a job interview, and it's always about trying to put the best version of yourself forward and seeing what sticks and what doesn't.

For me, there's no dichotomy between being shy or a performer, because I think it's more a way of slightly presenting a version of things to the world.

I have a tendency to trail off in conversations. I don't look up at people sometimes when I talk or cook, and those are all pretty bad no-no's being in front of the camera.

When I'm on set, I'm 100 percent comfortable, but at events and photo shoots, I'm beyond nervous.

There's a lot of pressure to chitchat with the audience. But when they're in school, people don't want to get up in front of their classroom when they have to talk about themselves or a project.

Looking back on my early romantic life, I was more worried about what impression I made on my dates than what I thought of them. I would approach them as though they were job interviews, trying to wow the man so that he would ask me out again and I got the 'job.'

Being around the energy of new people is wonderful. It only lifts my performance and makes it better.

Most people find just being themselves not enough of a show.

My theory about meeting people,' he said,'is that it's better not to make a really good first impression. Because it's all downhill from there. You're always having to live up to that first impression, which was just an illusion.

Most people, I've noticed, are instinctively harsh to strangers. They expect every approach to be an attack, every question to be an interruption.

I would often go on as myself, when I wasn't working. And the first time I went on as myself, two people came up and asked me what I was doing and who I was.