Top 35 David Oyelowo Quotes

I think it’s vital to have something outside your acting to keep you rooted in the real world, and help you fill the vacuum. If you have nothing else, it can be unhealthy. For me being a Christian has been invaluable: it simply means acting isn’t the centre of my life.

What I try to do with my career as an actor is what I’ve learned in the theater: I am rigorous with myself as to whether I’m telling the truth, and I try to surround myself with filmmakers and content creators who are also interested in the pursuit of the truth.

Excellence is the best weapon against prejudice. I intend to be part of the solution and not the problem. You’ve just got to keep on banging out good performances.

If you’re going to play human beings, and you’re going to play them three-dimensionally, you have to show every side of them.

Every time I go to Africa, I feel like I hit true north. There is a depth of feeling that I have for the continent, in the richness of the people, the suffering , but also the transcendent joy that is there – it’s like nowhere else on the planet.

One of the skills you have to master in theater is the ability to make the audience believe that things that aren’t there are there – just like when you’re acting against CGI. Also, in a theater, the people in the back row can’t see the whites of your eyes. Or your lips moving as you deliver dialogue.

I am a father, I am very aware of the things that I’m putting out in the world knowing that one day my children will watch the work that I’ve done. I want to be able to stand by it.

I’ve never, ever taken a role for money purposes or for some bizarre notion of what may be the kind of career move that would open things up for me. If I don’t believe in it, I can’t do it because I won’t be good in it if I don’t believe in it.

If you feel like the beginning of your history is rooted in slavery, that really, I think, messes with your sense of self, your self-esteem, and your self-worth.

I love tennis, love it!

Hollywood has done some of these films, and some of them are ginormous biblical movies, but you can tell the people making these are not invested in the truth of what those stories are biblically. It shows in the work.

One of the things the BBC does better than anyone is period drama.

My parents are very hard working people who did everything they could for their children. I have two brothers and they worked dog hard to give us an education and provide us with the most comfortable life possible. My dad provided for his family daily. So, yes, that is definitely in my DNA.

There are a lot of challenges I undeniably have faced as a black person both in the U.K. and in the U.S. that contrived to make me feel lesser than what I am.

Asher means ‘happy and blessed’ which embodies my eldest. Caleb means ‘stubborn and tenacious dog’ and I can’t even tell you how much that is my little boy! It was a useful warning.

For me, I’m always looking for opportunities to work with people who are better than me, who are more experienced than me, people from whom I can learn. And who could I learn more from than someone with an unprecedented movie star career that has spanned over thirty years whose name is Tom Cruise?

If my history, my indisputable British history, has never been visited, where does that put me? If we are only going to look at things that need a revisit, you are wiping me out of this country’s history. That is unacceptable to me.

I grew up watching period dramas, as we all did in the 1980s and ’90s – endless adaptations of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens – and I loved them. But I never saw anyone like me in them, so I decided to find a story to erode the excuses for me not doing one.

I consider myself a human being, a Christian, a father, a husband, so many things, before being a black person.

I love that as a black person I’ve experienced not being a minority. I think that’s helped me to combat the minority mentality people can have here, which can stop them scaling the heights.

I have a bee in my bonnet as to how few black historical figures one sees on film; incredible stories, stories from which we are living the legacy and which just don’t get made.

For me, I actively look for projects that showcase people of color.

Considering that I’m British and I talk the way I do, I love it when a director takes a chance on me.

Generally speaking, we as black people have been celebrated more for when we are subservient when we are not being leaders or kings or in the center of our own narrative driving it forward.

You can’t afford for there to be gaps in your pool of knowledge when it comes to a character; otherwise, what ends up onscreen is generalized and unspecific.

Not every film I do is going to be like ‘Selma,’ but every film I do can be edifying, can be something that points toward I believe to be true. I’m not one to shy away from darkness in movies as long as there is light.

I find that male directors are more interested in what the film looks like as opposed to what the film is about emotionally. My job is not to make the film look pretty, and I don’t feel drawn to making myself look pretty within the film.

I try as much as possible not to utter a single line that I don’t believe in.

I wasn’t one of those kids who grew up watching movies thinking, ‘That’s what I want to do when I grow up.’ I didn’t really particularly know I had an aptitude for it.

We can’t afford to deny our past in a bid to be empowered. But what we can do is contextualize the past.

I admire many actors, though I don’t think there’s anyone whose career I would want to mirror sort of by the beats. What I’m really looking to do is constantly defy expectations. I’m very curious to see if you can actually have a character actor and a movie star’s career combined.

‘The Help’ sheds light on a certain truth in America, but the tragedy is if we don’t get a chance to contrast it with other points of views. ‘The Butler’ does that, ‘Red Tails’ does that and that’s what ’96 Minutes’ does.

My grandfather was the king of a region in western Nigeria, where I had the privilege to live for seven years while growing up. But what we think of as royalty in the U.K. is very different to royalty in Nigeria: if you were to throw a stone there, you would hit about 30 princes.

Because I was aspirational, I did my work, I was respectful to my teachers, I experienced a lot of bullying from the black kids. My friends were largely white or Asian.

The only way we are going to get diversity is if the demographics of the decision-makers change… The odd-token bone thrown is not going to do it. Don’t pat yourself on the back because you made that black drama; that’s not diversity. It’s got to be baked into the foundation of where the ideas flow from.