I tell my daughter every morning, ‘Now, what are the two most important parts of you?’ And she says, ‘My head and my heart.’ Because that’s what I’ve learned in the foxhole: What gets you through life is strength of character and strength of spirit and love.
I know that love is real when it’s not convenient, when it’s not selfish, when it’s challenged, sometimes even if it’s not reciprocated.
I have been given a lot of roles that are downtrodden, mammy-ish. A lot of lawyers or doctors who have names but absolutely no lives. You’re going to get your three or four scenes; you’re not going to be able to show what you can do.
And this is what was fascinating to me about ‘The Help’; they were ordinary people who did extraordinary things.
Flashy characters are more entertaining to people because you get it. You don’t have to work to get someone who says what they mean and says what they think. They’re out there. It’s harder to play a quiet character because everything happens in their stream of consciousness.
Can I just tell you, I think it’s the most beautiful thing about young people today, it gives me so much hope for the future, that they don’t really recognize race the way my generation does.
This is the richest country in the world. There’s no reason kids should be going to school hungry. Food is something that everyone should have. It just is.
Acting came from growing up in dysfunction. I mean, a lot of great times, but a lot of dysfunction.
Your job as an actor is to piece together whatever you’ve learned in your training, or whatever you have experienced in your life, to piece together a person.
I think that’s something that people feel that I do really well; I don’t mind it, because ultimately I think the characters I play move people, and who wouldn’t want to move people?
When you are an actor, you are in the most powerless position in this business.
People who are alone all the time never grow. Those hermits just stay the same. It’s only through relationships. Relationships change us and make us grow.
I’m the journeyman actor that you saw in one scene here, two scenes there. I’ve been eking out a living doing theater – Broadway, Off Broadway – film supporting roles, that I’m just excited to be a part of the conversation.
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