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It's tough, acting. You have to walk two lines of a tightrope. There's the all-consuming fear of failure: I'm about to fall flat on my face. There's that and there's also confidence - you have to be confident in order to try things - and they fight each other all the time.
Jessica Chastain
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Acting requires balancing the fear of failure with the need for confidence.

In this quote, Jessica Chastain expresses the dual struggle that actors face: the fear of failing in their art while needing to maintain confidence to perform and take risks. This tension between fear and confidence is a universal challenge that many people encounter in various aspects of life, highlighting the courage it takes to confront potential failure while pursuing one's passions.

Themes

ActingFearConfidenceFailureCourage

In practice

Example use cases

In a motivational speech to budding actors, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of overcoming fear.

More from Jessica Chastain

This is an industry rife with racism, sexism and homophobia. It is so closely woven into the fabric of the business that we have become snowblind to the glaring injustices happening every day.
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I just want to see more women in film and behind the camera. I'm tired of seeing movies from one perspective.
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We know in our society, women are valued for their sexual desirability and not necessarily for what they have to say.
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I'm not taking jobs anymore where I'm getting paid a quarter of what the male co-star is being paid. I'm not allowing that in my life.
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It's a fact, the majority of films in Hollywood are from the male perspective. And the female characters, very rarely do they get to speak to another female character in a movie, and when they do it's usually about a guy, not anything else. So they're very male-centric, Hollywood films, in general. So I think it's incredible that Ned Benson, when I said I'd love to know where she goes, says okay, I'm going to write another film from the female perspective.
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I find it very interesting: when 90 percent of the critics that review films are men, how is that helpful when trying to create stories from a feminine point of view?
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