Performance Fear Quotes

I would love to write a song with the Everly brothers. But it's probably best not to work with someone you admire: they'll just show up your inadequacies.

I will not do festivals. The thought of an audience that big frightens the life out of me.

Certainly, I, as an audience, am stricken with terror if I see only two people onstage. And one person, I think, is even harder for people to take.

I love comedies. I love watching them. I think I've always been afraid of being on them a little bit.

Stage fright, like epilepsy, is a divine ailment, a sacred madness... It is a grace that is sufficient in the old Jesuit sense - that is, insufficient by itself but a necessary condition for success.

I was pretty scared of the idea as a younger person of being a musician on the road. It didn't occur to me as a possibility.

You do get a bit paranoid that you're becoming a sort of narcissist, an artistic solipsist when you're doing stand-up.

I'd love the chance to learn ballroom dances, but it's scary to be in the spotlight.

I didn't have any aspirations of becoming famous or successful; in fact I was scared to death of all that. I remember somebody once said that if a rock musician goes on tour, he goes insane. I was very impressionable and I carried this useless weight of fear around with me about going on tour, all because of this thing somebody said.

I can't emphasize the immediate panic that would set in when I had to audition. I can't believe I did it.

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

Every writer knows that unless you were born gifted with either supreme confidence or outsize ego, handing in your work holds, in some cases, admitted terror. If that's too strong, at least fairly high anxiety.

I had no idea that, when you audition for television or movies, you go to a big building - like, an office building - and you walk in the room, and everybody, I assumed, was smarter than me and better than me, and there's actors you recognize. I once fainted at an audition.

I seriously suck at auditions.

I'm always nervous before a job! I always think I'm going to be fired, I always think I can't do it. I always think I'm going to disappoint somebody, myself included.

I suffered a lot from social anxiety, and being on set was really scary to me. That fear can cause limits in your art and your performance because you're not going all in because there is this little thing in your head.

I think that when you are struggling as an actor, you imagine that if things were to pan out, everything in your life would change, But really, it's not so different. You're still pursuing good work. You still panic that you're doing it all wrong.

But when the 'Glee' audition came around, my manager literally had to talk me into it. I was petrified to sing in front of anyone.

I have the worst ear for criticism; even when I have created a stage set I like, I always hear the woman in the back of the dress circle who says she doesn't like blue.

Throughout my career, nervousness and stage-fright have never left me before playing. And each of the thousands of concerts I have played at, I feel as bad as I did the very first time.

Live performance really terrifies me. I haven't done it, really, in years. I think that's why I retired from my brief career in stand-up.

Stage fright is a real thing. It's debilitating to some people.

I did sing in a choir for a while, but if anybody was sick, I always whispered my songs to make sure nobody could pick out my voice.

I hated the whole idea of being an actress. I used to throw up before every performance and cry afterward.

I love to dance. But I don't like being up in front of tons of people. I didn't have the desire to be performing in front of a lot of people. So it wasn't something I ever seriously considered.