“If you are afraid of something, continue to look at it”

Hayley Atwell appeared in a recent episode of the podcast “Reign with Josh Smith” and credited his co-star “Mission: Impossible” Tom Cruise for having helped his social anxiety in Hollywood. Atwell made his franchise debut as Grace in 2023 “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning” and will take up the role in “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning of this summer”.

“Social anxiety tends to be something that people are talking about at the moment, right? And how many people have social anxiety at some point,” Atwell told Josh Smith. “It manifests in different ways, but Pep’s speech (Tom) gave me the help. If you enter a room and feel the anxieties coming, and that makes me want to withdraw into me, I start to think too much and say: “Do I seem weird?” Do I seem clumsy? We are entering ourselves and Tom said, “Try to do the opposite.” »»

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Cruise said to Atwell: “Try to look, look in the room and go … Where is it? Where is I attached to my insecurity? Is this person there who reminds me of my school intimidator? This person there did not give me a job once? This person there who, I think, deserved?”

“If I look at it long enough, anxiety can then have a name,” said Atwell. “He can have a label or what will happen is, I’m going to go:” Oh, you are really jealous “or” I’m really alone “or” I am really intimidated by the talent or the confidence of this person “. As soon as I can name what it really is, the general meaning of floating anxiety and I then did the opportunity to do something.

While “Dead Recking” has slightly disappointed with the box office with $ 571 million worldwide, Atwell’s chemistry and Cruise was largely acclaimed by film critics. The “Mission: Impossible” series is the second big Hollywood franchise in Atwell after his work as Peggy Carter in the Marvel cinematographic universe. The actor sang the praises of the cruise in past interviews, saying to the Guardian earlier this year that he is “very kind, very professional”.

“When I started, I was very aware of the rarefied air around him and the way there is no one like him,” said Atwell. “And there will never be again because the actors are no longer made like him … He is a studio to a man. And because of that, I felt that I could try a lot of different things. There has never been a risk of failure or being dangerous. Tom really likes people to prosper on the set. ”

Watch Atwell’s latest interview on the Podcast “Reign with Josh Smith” in the video below.

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