Expectation Burden Quotes

One of the hazards of making a major discovery early in your career is the burden of expectation, not helped in my case by becoming a wife and mother soon afterwards. I'm sure some people think it was a flash in the pan.

If you're not a target, you're a failure.

If you've got the best record, you're going to be the favourite. So you've got to play as the favourite with a bullseye on your back.

I don’t want to have to be like a Scarlett Johansson – who I have nothing against, but I don’t want to have to go on talk shows and pull out every single SAT word I’ve every learned to prove, like, ‘Take me seriously, I am intelligent, I can speak.’ I don’t want to have to do that. I resent having to prove that I’m not a retard – but I do. And part of it is my own fault.

When you are in your twenties if somebody hands you the keys to the kingdom and there's all this expectation and burden on you - what does that do to you and also how do you react to being given those keys?

It's always difficult for anyone trying to compete against their past achievements.

The very expectation that an actor loves to experiment becomes a shackle that is difficult to snap out of.

After the modest success of my first film, I found it very daunting to have to live with that kind of burden of expectations.

I've had the acting bug since I was, like, five. But growing up, I saw how people treated me differently when they knew who my father was, even the stuff I did on the field. Sometimes I'd rush for 100 yards, and the headline would be, 'Denzel's son runs for 100 yards.' That's where the suppression of that bug came from.

The expectation from other people kind of gets on me.