“I dont see myself only as a Somali character. I think of myself as an actor, and if the job fits me and I like the story, I will go for it.”

I left Somalia when I was seven years old, but I witnessed a whole year in a war.

I was lucky enough to have parents that took me out from country to country and go to school and learn how to be a better person.

The line was originally, ‘Captain Phillips, get a load of me: fancy-free on the seven seas,’ but I ad-libbed.

It is weird. A lot of people try to ask me political questions. Im not a politician.

What I believe will make my acting career successful going forward is hard work. I like to challenge myself. Then it’s the people I meet and choosing the projects I want to work on correctly. There’s a lot of characters I can play.

When you work with a great director, you realise you are far from being a director.

I just want to keep acting and better my craft and see how far it goes.

Most of us will have more than one job in our working lives, which means we will have more than one opportunity to seek meaningful work at different stages of our own deepening humanity.

You don’t ask a man, ‘Do you want to be in control [of your job]?’ You assume he wants control. Why would a woman be any different?

What I saw day-to-day is like people who are actually asking for freedom, calling for freedom – protesting, singing, chanting, calling for the removal of the regime – plain and simple.

I was a hot-dog stand lady, I was an orphan housemother, I was a waitress 3 or 4 times. All of those jobs did not have good bosses. They basically told you what to do, when to do and when to hop. And I just didn’t like that very much.

I wouldn’t take a directing job if I didn’t think it was enriching life.

In doing one’s work primarily for God, the fear of undue restriction is put, sooner or later, out of the question. He pays me and He pays me well. He pays me and He will not fail to pay me.

And it’s true. It’s so true. All those years of loving Zik because he never asked about Eve… I never realized, I never understood. It was his job as my best friend not to ask. But it was my job as his best friend to tell him without being asked.

To feel valued, to know, even if only once in a while, that you can do a job well is an absolutely marvelous feeling.