16 celebrity quotes on suffering with impostor syndrome

Thank god we're not the only ones...

Words by Martha Edwards

It would be easy to assume that celebrities ooze confidence 24/7, but even the beautiful and the powerful can feel those unwelcome pangs of insecurity and self-doubt at times.

Ever felt like a fraud at work? You’re not alone.

Here are 16 successful celebrities who are living proof that impostor syndrome can affect everyone...

1) Tina Fey 'The beauty of the impostor syndrome is you vacillate between extreme egomania and a complete feeling of: "I'm a fraud! Oh God, they're on to me! I'm a fraud!" So you just try to ride the egomania when it comes and enjoy it, and then slide through the idea of fraud.'

2) Meryl Streep 'You think, "Why would anyone want to see me again in a movie? And I don't know how to act anyway, so why am I doing this?"'

3) Emma Watson 'When I was younger, I just did it. I just acted. It was just there. So now when I receive recognition for my acting, I feel incredibly uncomfortable. I tend to turn in on myself. I feel like an impostor. It was just something I did.'

4) Robert Pattinson 'In a lot of ways, I’m quite proud that I’m still getting jobs. Because of falling into a job, you always feel like you’re a fraud, that you’re going to be thrown out at any second.'

5) Kate Winslet 'Sometimes I wake up in the morning before going off to a shoot, and I think, I can't do this. I'm a fraud.'

6) Jennifer Lopez

'Even though I had sold 70 million albums, there I was feeling like "I’m no good at this."'

7) Natalie Portman 'When I got to Harvard just after the release of Star Wars: Episode 1, I feared people would assume I had gotten in just for being famous, and not worthy of the intellectual rigor here.'

8) Sheryl Sandberg 'There are still days when I wake up feeling like a fraud, not sure I should be where I am.'

9) Daniel Radcliffe 'I think the most creative people veer between ambition and anxiety, self-doubt and confidence. I definitely can relate to that. We all go through that: "Am I doing the right thing?" "Is this what I’m meant to be doing?"'

10) Amy Adams 'After filming Catch Me If You Can, I choked. I felt this pressure to suddenly be this level of actress that I wasn't confident enough to be. I did a series of really bad auditions, I let the nerves get the best of me. And the couple of years after that it was, "I can't do this. I'm not strong enough to continue with this level of rejection". It was, "What am I going to do with my life?"'

11) Chris Martin 'It's helpful to have some arrogance with paranoia. If we were all paranoia, we'd never leave the house. If we were all arrogance, no one would want us to leave the house.'

12) Jodie Foster 'When I won the Oscar, I thought it was a fluke. I thought everybody would find out, and they'd take it back. They'd come to my house, knocking on the door, "Excuse me, we meant to give that to someone else. That was going to Meryl Streep."'

13) Renée Zellweger 'Sometimes I wake up at night and go, "Oh, damn! Here we go again! What were they thinking? They gave me this role; don't they know I'm faking it?"'

14) Amy Poehler 'You will never climb Career Mountain and get to the top and shout, "I made it!" You will rarely feel done or complete or even successful. Most people I know struggle with that complicated soup of feeling slighted on one hand and like a total fraud on the other.'

15) Lady Gaga 'I still sometimes feel like a loser kid in high school and I just have to pick myself up and tell myself that I’m a superstar every morning so that I can get through this day and be for my fans what they need for me to be.'

16) Michelle Williams'Every day feels like the first day and every day you think, "They’re going to fire me; I don’t know what I’m doing here; I don’t know how to do this; I don’t know why I’m here; Everybody’s going to find out."'