I have a very ostrich mentality. I feel like I have my head in the sand so no one can see me.
As actors, you become an expert at starting over.
Seek perfection, and find joy in never attaining it.
It doesn’t escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else’s.
You can’t eat beauty. It doesn’t feed you.
That you will feel the validation of your external beauty but also get to the deeper business of being beautiful inside. There is no shade to that beauty.
I’ve worked hard to feel beautiful in my natural skin. Personally, I don’t ever want to depend on makeup to feel beautiful.
Human beings have an instinct for freedom.
Being called gorgeous is not a bad thing! But at the same time, I don’t want to thrive on people’s opinions of me.
Whoopi Goldberg looked like me, she had hair like mine, she was dark like me. I’d been starved for images of myself. I’d grown up watching a lot of American TV.
It’s in understanding yourself deeply that you can lend yourself to another person’s circumstances and another person’s experience.
It’s only when you risk failure that you discover things. When you play it safe, you’re not expressing the utmost of your human experience.
I like to wear things, I don’t like things to wear me.
Even in my dreams of being an actor, my dream was not in the celebrity. My dream was in the work that I wanted to do.
My immediate family was always very supportive. It was my own fear of the rest of the world not accepting me, the rest of our society not accepting my wish to be an actor.
The muscles you flex in theater are muscles that you really need. I must always find a way to get back there. It’s irreplaceable.
I grew up watching foreign programs – American, English, Mexican, and very little Kenyan. ‘The Color Purple’ was the first time I saw people who looked like me.
It’s great to have something to dress up for. You know, I spent three years in slacks at drama school, so now I like putting a dress on.
Makeup isn’t something I’ve worn a lot of in my life.
Steve McQueen is a genius. And I think that word is overused, but I think with Steve it’s rightly used. He’s a genius.