“I’ve been in this business 25 years. I’ve been eking out a living doing Broadway, off-Broadway… I’ve seen the unemployment line a lot.”

Each role has its own different challenges.

I just look at women sometimes and I just want to ask them, “Do you know how fabulous you are?”

I don’t want anyone putting any limits on me.

It feels really good to embrace exactly who I am and be my sexy, to be my sexualized, to be my woman.

And this is what was fascinating to me about ‘The Help’; they were ordinary people who did extraordinary things.

If the opportunity is not out there for you to play it, then you don’t see it.

If the opportunity is not out there for you to play it, then you don’t see it.

If the opportunity is not out there for you to play it, then you don’t see it.

They say the two most important days in a person’s life were the day you were born and the day you discover why you were born.

They say the two most important days in a person’s life were the day you were born and the day you discover why you were born.

They say the two most important days in a person’s life were the day you were born and the day you discover why you were born.

I think sometimes what people miss about black people is that we’re complicated.

Any actor will tell you, as soon as your ego and your vanity come into the mix, it destroys your work. Completely destroys it.

I want to span different genres. I want to be able to transform. I want to be able to be sexy, and funny, and quirky, and all the other things that I am. And I feel that the best way that I can achieve that is by producing.

That’s why there’s so much bad acting out there, because you could see actors watching themselves.

I am not a glam woman – this definitely is a mask I put on for the public.

They say an actor is only as good as his parts. Well, my parts have done me pretty well, darling.

I always give one actor an emotion to make it very easy so he or she can root to it.

When I was a young actress, I was called in just to do my part, and I didn’t have any say or weight as far as any decisions go. But today, having worked as a producer and also having lived a little, I feel like I’ve found my voice more. I’m sure that it has influenced me as an actor and it will continue to do so.

Some actors come to the set ready to do their parts a certain way.

I’m an actor, and everything about me – the way I perceive things, the way I have seen the world – has been in relation to characters and how I would want to play something or not play it.

Actors don’t act, we’re just being in a different circumstance and scenario.

Being a good actor isn’t easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I’m done.

I consider myself a blue-collar actor, just chugging away.