You should never feel comfortable. There is something wrong if you are. You should always feel under threat, on the edge of your seat and pushing yourself. Win one and you want to win more. It's never-ending.
I never think about any of my accomplishments and I always get butterflies in my stomach and I never get too comfortable with the status.
Someone once told me I'm a sore winner, and they're right. I rarely take more than a moment to enjoy a success before I'm moving on and looking for the next challenge.
I feel like it's dangerous to get complacent and celebrate too much... You can't get comfortable.
Even when I had a run of successful prime-time shows, I couldn't sit down and enjoy my success. I would beat myself up and scrutinise everything. I'm a natural-born worrier.
I can be a real pessimist. You know that when you win an Oscar, and you walk offstage, and your first thought is: 'Oh God, I've peaked.'
To this day, I haven't felt like I've made it. I'm waiting for them to pull the rug out from under me. I kind of feel like George Plimpton; I'm just experiencing this whole business with the really talented people.
I've always been too hard on myself to behave like I've arrived or even to enjoy whatever success I've had. I've always envisioned myself higher than where I was and I still do. With each success I think, 'That's nice but I'm supposed to go there!'
In the big picture, few of our careers live up to the dreams we nursed when we were young. In fact, one underside of success is that it's nearly always penultimate, and so every accomplishment merely raises the bar.
I sort of have imposter syndrome, and I think when is this all going to end, when are they going to realise that I'm not a proper TV presenter.
Honestly, a lot of people thought that I was on top of the world selling so many millions of records, and that this is the life that everybody would want, but I never got to enjoy any of my success.
I never want to feel like I've achieved my goal. It's like Chinese farmers. They never admit that it's a good season. They feel like they'll be punished.
I used to feel unsafe right in the moment of an accomplishment - I felt the ground fall from under my feet because this could be the end. And even now, while everyone is celebrating, I'm on to the next thing. I don't want to get lost in this big cushion of success.
I've spent years in therapy excavating my endless, often fruitless drive to overachieve. I have learned that being successful hasn't made me happy. It's just made me successful. I even call myself a recovering overachiever.
