Maisie Williams Opened Up About Dealing With Imposter Syndrome And It's Seriously Real

    "I'm sitting in my bed, thinking, 'Maybe no one wants me. Maybe I shouldn't go out.'"

    Ellie Bate
    by Ellie Bate

    BuzzFeed Staff

    You probably know Maisie Williams best for her role as the badass Arya Stark in Game of Thrones.

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    It was Maisie's first-ever professional acting role, with the show premiering when she was just 14 years old, so it's safe to say she grew up over the period of the GoT's eight seasons.

    HBO

    And in a new interview with Glamour, Maisie opened up about the early years of her career, saying she felt like an "outsider" when she started acting and admitting she still deals with imposter syndrome.

    "I'd never trained to be an actor and because I started when I was really young, I didn't really feel I was in the acting crowd," Maisie told the magazine. "I've definitely felt like an outsider."

    Angela Weiss / AFP / Getty Images

    "I think even being an actress for over a decade now, I still have imposter syndrome," Maisie went on. "Where you're asking yourself, 'Oh, is this really what I'm supposed to be doing? Am I actually going to do this for the rest of my life?'"

    "Maybe I should just stop overthinking everything and start just doing you, right?" she added. "But instead I'm sitting in my bed, thinking, 'Maybe no one wants me. Maybe I shouldn't go out, maybe I shouldn't leave the house.'"

    But, Maisie said, things improved when she found a group of friends who gave her a sense of belonging.

    "I just wanted to allow myself to be freer. I used to be just so neurotic and overthink everything," Maisie said when asked what advice she'd give to her younger self. "She would probably say 'You don't know anything. Shut up. You don't know me.'"

    Jeff Kravitz / FilmMagic for HBO

    This isn't the first time Maisie has opened up about the negatives of fame. Last year, she spoke to Fearne Cotton on the Happy Place podcast about the "crazy, crazy world of showbiz", admitting fame is often "not worth it".

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    "When people are on social media, they feel like whatever they write, no one's gonna see it, no one's gonna read it, but they do," Maisie said. "And it will affect them for a long time."

    "When I do feel myself going down a rabbit hole, it gets to a point where you're almost craving something negative so you can sit in a hole of sadness," she added. "It's really bizarre the way that it starts to consume you."

    Read Maisie's full interview with Glamour magazine here.