Amy Adams is insecure.

She told Elle UK: “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?’ I was staring down 30. I was lost, confused.

“I had an existential crisis at the Oscars, sitting next to Sean Penn and Meryl Streep and being like, ‘What am I doing here? I don’t belong here.’ I felt like it could all be taken away.

“Being an actress hasn’t made me insecure. I was insecure long before I dec lared I was an actress. I like not being noticed. It has been a struggle because I love performing, but if I’m in a group of people and someone has a bigger personality I’m like ‘Go ahead, and have fun!’ It looks like a lotta work.”

Despite her insecurities over her acting career, Amy is excited about her latest role as Lois Lane in Superman reboot 'Man of Steel'.

She said: “It’s more raw, a little less quippy. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the banter and the relationship between Lois and Clark, but it’s a totally new imagining of the story. I was shaking by the end of it. I realised that I hadn’t seen a film with that much action in it since Avatar, so it overwhelmed my adrenal system. Not that it’s all just action, but it is a lot of fun.”