Elizabeth Olsen admits she once struggled with imposter syndrome when it came to pursuing acting.
Long before she became a familiar face on screens big and small, the Eternity star said she felt unsure about openly sharing her dream of becoming an actress.
Speaking on the Tuesday (Nov. 25) episode of Mythical Kitchen, Olsen told host Josh Scherer—around the 25-minute mark—that she had always wanted to act in classic films like Grease and Gypsy.
“I just loved [acting] so much, and it wasn’t really until I got to junior high I was insecure about wanting to do it so badly that I pretended I was going to do something in accounting or banking or something, because I loved math,” Olsen shared.
Olsen went on to say that dreaming of a Hollywood career felt strange because, as a Los Angeles native, she grew up surrounded by it.
“It felt foolish for me to want something that people came to the city for. I was like, ‘Well, I know better, and most people don’t become actors,'” she explained.
Everything shifted in high school when she quit volleyball to take on a role in a stage production — a moment she described as completely transformative.
“And then I was just like, ‘This is all I ever want to do.’ I don’t know why I pretended I didn’t,” Olsen said, noting that she even wrote a letter to a teacher about her passion for acting being “reawoken.”
“That was always my passion since I had a memory. There’s nothing that I wanted to do more before that besides maybe be a princess,” she added.
Olsen — the younger sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen — also shared that she never cared much for fame.
“My way around it was studying theater and thinking I was going to go into theater and not film and TV,” she told Scherer.
