James McAvoy Quotes

I never really committed to being an actor. It never felt like it would be possible, I guess.

When I was in my twenties, I was a self-conscious, out-of-work actress. Then I decided to be a writer and got hired on an NBC show that got canceled after one year. I was heavily discouraged by someone I worked for who told me I wasn't good.

I remember feeling that. I couldn't do, nor did I want to do, the kinds of roles I'd been doing.

I've had some ambivalent feelings about being an actor. I don't know that I've ever been totally and completely comfortable with it.

I have an enormous sense of having failed in life.

I thought I wanted to be an electrical engineer, which I turned out to be. But I was always curious about other things too, and what if I got interested in history or the law?

I've got actor friends who didn't get breaks, who struggle and worry about things that I'm fortunate not to have to worry about.

Within me, I knew I would never be a first-rate producer. I wasn't tough enough.

I still have the actor's disease. I always think I'll never get another job.

Actors live dependent on being validated by other people's opinions. I don't understand what it is I do that people want. I don't know what an actor does. I have no credentials. I don't know what I'm doing.

I didn't have any doubts about my choice of career, but I had constant doubts about my ability, yes.

I can relate to having those people in your life that you feel are moving on to this great, big, normal life and you're like, 'What's wrong with me?'

He [Richard Nixon] was more lacking in self-confidence than any leading politician I have known.

It always amazed me - it still does - that people offer me work. And when the theater was my basic bread and butter, every time a show finished, I was convinced I would never work again.

I'd be on stage in Ireland performing for thousands of people and just not believing in what I'm doing at all. And it hurt, it hurt badly. I knew every day that I couldn't continue this way.

I do believe I'm not good enough to be a professional dancer. I believe that in my heart.

I have no idea whether I'm any good or not. Still waiting, like most actors, for somebody to find out one day that I can't do it.

I'm an actress but it's not fulfilling me in the way I thought it would.

I was scared of failure, of being a one-hit wonder, never being able to write another song again, never being able to sing again. Maybe everything that I think I am and who I want to be never will happen.

I think I've underachieved quite heavily.

When I left college, nobody expected much of me - and nor did I.

I'm someone who's experienced impostor syndrome - as I think a lot of people have with their careers, especially when they pursue what they're passionate about, because they want to be good at it. I've experienced that as a gay man; I've experienced that as a cook, as a gallery director, as a student of psychology.

I was always introduced as the Beatles photographer and I gave it up in the end. I was so unsure of myself. Am I good or am I just the Beatles photographer? People were not interested in what I did before. I could not stand it any more.

I panicked in my 20s and 30s about whether I was doing the right thing. I was an excited puppy, wanting to please people and feeling guilty that I'd had a privileged education and an acting career.

I was afraid that if I said, 'Yes, I'm an actor,' what would happen if I was bad at it?