Claire Danes Quotes

An actor is totally vulnerable. His total personality is exposed to critical judgment - his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance. In short, his ego.

I knew that if I just came out as a singer, people would just be criticizing my voice.

I don't really change much; there's not much I can do about the judging in front of a home crowd.

When you sit down and play your music for someone you respect, you get that feeling in your stomach of like: 'Oh my God...' You know if it's not great because you start to feel sick.

You are exposing yourself all the time as an actor. There's the risk of being thought of as bad or boring or unattractive.

Usually when I take my films to festivals, I feel incredibly anxious about them. I wonder how it will be received, how the audience will react. I feel deeply responsible for them.

I really fell into drama school - I had a lot of lot of luck. I didn't take criticism very well while I was there; in fact, I took it personally. With every note I got, I felt like they were telling me I was a bad person.

As an actor, you put yourself out there. You put yourself in the arena as an easy target.

If people don't like your act, it feels a little bit more like they don't like you as opposed to they didn't like that character... It's weird because on one hand, we make our living from being permeable and vulnerable, but we also have to have very thick skin.

It's taken me a long, long time to figure out how to deal with negativity, because it used to really upset me. I was always that girl that, if I was performing in the club and there was one person not paying attention or not liking me, the whole club could be packed with people loving me, but I'd be obsessed with that one person.

My combined experiences, doing different films, has made me very concerned about and interested in how you protect your creative self when the work, by default, is going to be judged by people.

It's not easy that everything you do, everybody has to come in and critique it and give their opinion. Sometimes it does help me and sometimes it hurts me as a person. That's life. I have feelings.

Frankly, I get much more sensitive about what's written about me than how I look in a photo. I'm so used to people seeing my image in plays and films that what they think about how I look is none of my business. If they says, "Hey, he doesn't look good," I'm like, Whatever, because I know I look different from day to day. But if you're up there putting your heart into something and people reject your performance, that's very painful. The written word can kick your ass.

Comedy is frightening at first because you're opening yourself up. When it's just you and people hate it, you're like, "Oh God. Do they hate me?"

I would never have a listening party! That's super awkward. Having to watch other people listen to or appraise something you've done is the most uncomfortable experience you could ever have.

Reading nice stuff about you is lovely, but I know it's going to be soul-destroying when you do something that everyone is tearing apart.

Nobody likes to be judged, including me, but I am the first to say that I am far from perfect.

Actors are very emotional, whereas sports people are used to criticism.

It's weird to take your work into a room and everybody reads it. Then comes the terror part, the dissection.

Strength doesn't necessarily come from resisting fear, weakness, or any other feeling and overcoming it. Strength comes from looking at those things straight on--and accepting them as they really are.

Obviously when I'm put in a situation where there is a lot of attention on me, it's this weird dichotomy - I like it, because I feel like I'm a natural born performer. But I do feel the most vulnerable.

I'm the one who has to have everybody throw rocks at me all the time, so at least if they're going to throw rocks at me, they're going to throw rocks at me for something I love rather than something I think is not very good, or at least something I think is not finished.

If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’.

To be famous is to stand on a pedestal and give the world permission to tell you all your flaws.

When they called my name, I had this feeling I could hear half of America going, 'Oh no. Come on... Her, again?' You know. But, whatever.