“I try to look at every role the same way, regardless of whether the character is real or the character is a fantasy. I always start from myself, because you have to know yourself first.”

If Love is too much to ask, at least Respect everyone, regardless of race, creed, sexual preference, bloodline, criminal history, power, or position.

If we don’t learn from the mistakes of the past, we are doomed to repeat them in the future.

For all the claims that we now live in a society free of racism, the tragedies that presently overwhelm us are a stiff dose of reality.

I am not a huge fan of surprises.

FBF to one of the most beautiful locations I’ve ever shot at.

Rise up. Register. Let your voice be heard.

I can definitely dance, but pedestrian dancing.

I’m not so keen on letting my car drive itself.

I don’t have a smart house. My house is very dumb.

Each movie you do about a real person is like a painting, and you choose certain things in the painting that you want to pull out and you want to show.

I’d taken, like, maybe some African dance classes a couple of times, but I wasn’t a musical theater person at all.

I can’t even imagine something being more fun than playing James Brown onstage.

I don’t read reviews, but I do get feedback from my peers and people I know, like other actors and directors and producers.

I think there’s a difference between a working actor, a movie star and a celebrity. They’re all three different things.

Sometimes when you’re acting, you only need a little bit of something to sort of channel or, you know, transport into a place.

As a director, it is important to understand the actor’s process.

I could care less about being an action actor like Stallone or Schwarzenegger.

It’s my job as an actor to commit to the role and not – through my own inhibitions – run away.

I never understood actors who could just wait around.

It’s really, really, really difficult to have the same occupation as the person you’re with – especially when you’re both actors.

To be an actor you have to have a certain amount of madness in you. That’s why, when people meet you and you seem very together, they are quite surprised – they don’t see you behind closed doors.

Part of the reason of being an actor is you like playing other people’s lives and exploring all the psychologies in that and the emotions.

An actor works with their soul and their thought.

When you’re an actor, you’re a slave to other people’s visions.