Ardal O'Hanlon Quotes

I'm afraid that I won't do a good job when I go into an audition.

I was kind of scared of failing at acting.

I always get nervous when I watch what I'm in. Very self-critical.

I always feel scared and insecure on a film set. I don't know any other way.

Like everybody in show business, you think you're going to wake up one day, and it's all going to be taken away from you. I think we all share an insecurity in that way, everybody in show business - the ones I talk to, anyway.

These days I am ruled by doubt, and that is a difficult place to write from.

I'm intimidated every day I go on the stage and everyday I go on a movie set. It's terrifying and I always want to reshoot the first day or the first week, I'm so terrified.

I'm sure acting is a deeply neurotic thing to do.

For the first six or eight months at Juilliard I felt paralysed. I didn't know what I was doing.

At every premiere, I stand in the back, I never sit, worrying. And then maybe I hear them laugh or whatever, and the muscles unclench a little. But always, I feel like it's a fluke, that I'll never be able to do it again.

If I'm not nervous, if I don't have at least a little bit of the same self-doubt and anxious feelings I had when I started playing, then it will be time for me to go on. I must have that tension.

Part of the problem is that he lacks confidence. He is nervous.

I'm always just very nervous. I never feel like, 'I've got this'. I'm always very nervous and aware of how quickly people can hate you and that scares me. I never feel like I'm on top of it or I know what I'm doing... so, no. I never get a big head, I just get more and more anxious.

I think most other comics are like, 'I'm going to do my fkin' act and that'll be that.' With me, it's like, 'What if I forget my jokes? What if I can't pull it together? This is going to be a fking disaster!'

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 think you're not a human being unless you have doubts and fears.

There are several times when I walked into a room and just felt like such a sham. That's the problem with auditioning.

Every single time I start to do a picture, without fail, I feel as if I don't know what I'm doing.

If I ever completely lost my nervousness I would be frightened half to death.

I lay in my dressing room after being in make-up waiting to go on. They knew I was feeling pretty rotten and they tried to give me time to rest. But I couldn't sleep. I couldn't do anything.

There is always a point when one senses one's lack of skill, the doubt.

Auditioning for 'Philomena' was such a traumatic experience because I had three callbacks, and I was absolutely positive that I was just an option.

You have that moment just before you go on - I've had it in every play - where you just kind of want to run away. There's a whole audience, and they are waiting outside, and you're like, 'Why am I doing this again? Why? Why?'

But I'm guessing every actor is insecure.

I've always been a bit of a self-doubter. I think a lot of actors are.