I value not being good at things, because children are not good at things.
Growing up, I had really bad skin. I had a skin disorder. Yes, I did. And my mother went to great lengths to try to find something to remedy it. I remember she took a trip to Madagascar and came back with all these alternative, medicinal herbs and stuff. They didn’t smell so good, but I think they worked some magic.
I went to an all-boys high school, and they accepted girls in only the two A.P. classes.
I never understood who all those people are behind the actors! When you see them on the red carpet on TV, you go, ‘Why does that person need such a large entourage?’ And then you realize that every single person there has a role to play.
I definitely intend to create my own work in the future so that we don’t have to keep saying, We don’t have work for black women.’
As human beings, we aren’t as individual as we’d like to believe we are. And I think that’s what makes acting possible. Despite the fact that I have not experienced something, I have it in my human capacity to imagine it and to put myself in someone else’s shoes, and to take someone else’s circumstances personally.
I want to be uncomfortable – acting is uncomfortable.
Clay can be dirt in the wrong hands, but clay can be art in the right hands.
Dreams are the foundation of Hollywood. And dreams are the foundation of America.
I would love to have a career that’s governed by the material; I always want to be part of stories that I feel are worthwhile.
That’s such a powerless place for me to think about: what is working against me. I don’t think of what I don’t have; I think of what I do and use that to get the next thing.
Slavery is something that is all too often swept under the carpet.
It’s so funny, you go to acting school thinking you’re going to learn how to be other people, but really it taught me how to be myself. Because it’s in understanding yourself deeply that you can lend yourself to another person’s circumstances and another person’s experience.
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