Chris Evans almost turned down Captain America role due to 'social anxiety'

LOS ANGELES, April 12 (UPI) -- Chris Evans admitted on Jimmy Kimmel Live! recently that he almost turned down the role of Captain America due to "social anxiety."

"Yeah I was scared, at first it was some nine picture contract, and there are parts of me that have a little bit of social anxiety with this industry," the actor explained to Kimmel Monday while promoting his latest movie as the character, the upcoming Captain America: Civil War.

"In doing movies one at a time, if all of a sudden you decide you don't wanna do them anymore, you're afforded the opportunity to take a step back and recalibrate," he continued. "When you have a giant contract, if all of a sudden you're not responding well, too bad, you gotta suit up again. That was scary."

Ultimately however, Evans was able to overcome his fears and see the value in taking on the part. "It kept coming back my way. I said no a few times and it kept coming back and I talked to a few people in my life, family and friends, and it just started to kind of make sense that I was saying no out of fear," Evans explained.

"Really, you can't do anything out of fear. You can't be doing something because you're scared, so it ended up just kind of clicking to me and the way of looking at it is, whatever you're scared of, push yourself into it," he concluded.

"So you are a hero in real life as well is what you're telling me," Kimmel joked after the explanation.

Evans was then joined by his fellow Civil War co-stars Anthony Mackie, Paul Rudd and Sebastian Stan to debut a new clip from the superhero epic and take part in a trivia game composed of questions about each other.

The most revealing moment came when Stan answered correctly that Evans knows all of the words to Disney's The Little Mermaid.

Captain America: Civil War arrives in theaters May 6.