Top 45 Ncuti Gatwa Quotes

The strangest place I have been recognised is a urinal. I was like: ‘Why are you talking to me now?’ That is the weirdest thing, but the most uncomfortable is when you are on the street and someone just grabs you.

It’s very important to see a black gay teen represented.

I used to be a really great dancer. I used to do it quite a lot and then I stopped. Now my body has forgotten all that training.

It’s incredibly important for the world to see a gay black character that’s comfortable with themselves on screen.

I went to school in a place called Dunfermline, which is in Fife – it’s like the middle of Scotland – so I didn’t have sprawling lawns of green and high school bomber jackets and an amazing clock tower.

I think I have got quite a posh Scottish accent. It’s funny because I grew up in Oxgangs and Fife.

I couldn’t believe I was homeless and working in Harrods. How many people must be going through this in London?

To be able to show your creativity or your creative expression on your body is a very powerful thing.

Nobody should be getting silenced.

I think we’ve got a very two-dimensional view of what masculinity is, of what strength is, what a guy needs to do.

Hair in the black community is such a big thing culturally. The barbershop is a place for black men to socialise, catch up and bond. It’s the same for black women in the salon. Going there is my favourite thing to do in the week. You catch up with people, someone comes around with food, someone else is selling something.

The world has been set up in such a way that we don’t even realise how ingrained certain things are, like how much we live in a patriarchal society or how institutional racism is ingrained in how we see the world. We don’t realise how many things are being set in stone, in our heads.

There was one scene in which I wore a wig, full make-up and stilettos and thought, ‘Oh my God, my family, all my friends in Tottenham! Nobody’s ever seen me like this before… ‘ It was definitely a challenge but it helped me become braver as an actor.

Make-up are the first people the actors go to on set every day – they see you at your most vulnerable. Then they paint the character on you, they’re integral to that transformation. It’s such an intimate art form that you develop a really close relationship with your make-up artist.

I was homeless.

I have faith, but I’m not the biggest fan of organised religion. There’s a lot of hypocrites in church. A lot of hypocrites.

Buying my pain aux raisins and someone wanting a selfie was so confusing.

It was so normal for me to have racial abuse spat at me and then when I moved to Dunfermline, there were a group of boys who made up a racist social media page geared at me.

A lot of our sex education at school is so biological.

In a small way, I’m driven by proving people wrong: because of the background I come from, I think a lot of people have doubted that I would get this far.

Once people you haven’t met and don’t even know you hate you, that’s how you know you’ve made it.

When we have gay characters on TV, they’re just, kind of, gay for the sake of being gay. That’s their personality. That’s their whole backstory, that’s their future story, that’s their present story – it’s just gay. Nobody’s just gay.

You get on the tube and you notice everyone’s looking at you, and you’re like, ‘What’s on my face?’ It always takes me a couple of seconds to remember I’m on a Netflix show that airs to the entire world.

Asa Butterfield is a big prankster.

I’m liking coming to nice hotels, getting nice clothes sent to me – I got a pair of free boots the other day! It definitely makes a change from getting the 243 bus from Tottenham.

I grew up with a single mum, an immigrant mum who couldn’t speak the language, no money, three kids on her back, coming from Rwanda, and she’s done a sterling job with all three of us.

For any parent, all they want is for their child to be safe and cared for.

You make your own destiny.

I love Ghanaian food.

As an actor you have good spells and bad spells.

Whatever journey you’re on is fine. Take the pressure off yourself.

Yeah, we were refugees coming to the U.K. and I definitely now view myself as a Rwandan Scotsman.

I’m most proud of my heritage; being able to shape people’s perception of Rwanda or Rwandans.

I was a working-class kid in a middle-class environment. Fashion was my way of saying, ‘You can tap me for this and tap me for that, but you can’t deny I look good.’

My career had been going pretty well until I took a job touring America. When I returned, it took time to remind people I was back in town and available. For four months – actually a short time for an actor to be out of work – I couldn’t book any jobs.

Maybe six months out of drama school, I was working at the Dundee Rep Theatre, I worked there for about a year, and I had an audition for the National Theatre of Scotland. I went into the audition room and when I came out I realized my fly was undone. I did this whole dramatic speech with my fly hanging low.

I love theater, and I love that you have to be so intensely in the character and you have to hit that place every single night. It’s just really good training. It was just a very good way of falling in love with my craft.

I developed depression. But I never let people know how down I was feeling. That would have been another burden for my friends to take on. My mind became my biggest enemy.

Resilience has always been something I’ve seen and admired.

I was supposed to move into a new place and it fell through. So for five months before Sex Education, I was couch-surfing among all my friends. I didn’t have a home.

I’m a chatterbox.

When I lost weight due to only eating once a day, people said how lean and healthy I looked.

Just before I got ‘Sex Ed,’ I was going to give up acting. I was like, I have to put an end to this. So I was working constantly in the theater and somehow still just couldn’t afford to live in London.

What your child wants and what you know is right for them can be very conflicting at times.

I was born in Nyarugenge, a district in Kigali, Rwanda.