After college, I shot a pilot for a show on Lifetime, which was basically House of Style for a TV lover. I think I got paid $1,500, and I was like, “Mom, I’m moving out! I made it!” I did two seasons of that, but I felt like a talking head and wanted to do more.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSSI want to be awake. I want to choose kindness, live & let live. I want joy, gratitude, and peace today.
More Tracee Ellis Ross Quotes
-
-
It would drive the photographers crazy because I would giggle and tell jokes. I was gregarious, and looking back, I realize I had a captive audience.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSS -
I’m a farmer’s market girl, so if you go and get beautiful, fresh fruit, that’s local, and it hasn’t been frozen yet, it’s pretty fantastic.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSS -
My mom would leave her job, and there would be throngs of people screaming and banging on our car. I come from a very private family, but I was born into a public family.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSS -
My bathroom is filled with hair and makeup stuff and I play with it all the time. What the real lesson is, is that you can own your own sense of beauty. It doesn’t have to be something you get from somewhere else.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSS -
My mom didn’t adhere to any of those typical rules. She woke us up for school every morning, and was there at dinner or would call at bedtime. She never left for longer than a week. She recorded while we were sleeping.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSS -
Throughout high school, I was obsessed with magazines. I used to just comb through them and plaster things on my wall.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSS -
It was when I realized I needed to stop trying to be somebody else and be myself, that I actually started to own, accept and love what I had.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSS -
Someone asked me recently, “Do you get sick of people asking you about your hair?” And the reason I don’t is because I actually feel like you could chronicle my journey of self-acceptance through my journey with my hair. It’s a badge of something bigger.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSS -
Why am I beating my hair up? Because I want it to look like something that it isn’t? These are questions that I’ve been pondering my whole life.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSS -
The two things that I thought were really interesting about this character [Bow] for me were that she actually loved her husband, and he loved her. The comedy was not coming from the fact that they hated each other. Which is what television couples are usually based on.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSS -
Differences in experience, points of view and opinions aren’t what pulls us apart. It’s what pulls us together.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSS -
There is a way to be a woman, ask for what we deserve and be able to negotiate.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSS -
My generation is one of the first generations of “choiceful” women – women who have actually had the choice of how they architect their lives – and I don’t think shame should have any place in that. But as that generation, you get cuts and bruises.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSS -
When you feel happy, you look beautiful.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSS -
This woman [Bow] was not simply a reflection of who her husband was. She was her own whole self. And even if we weren’t exploring life through her eyes, when we did see her it was clear that she had a full life.
TRACEE ELLIS ROSS






