I didn’t grow up thinking I was pretty; there was always a prettier girl than me. So I learned to be smart and tried to be funny and develop the inside of me, because I felt like that’s what I had.
Your life is your story, and the adventure ahead of you is the journey to fulfill your own purpose and potential.
I feel like any single woman of color who’s been onstage has a Shakespeare monologue in her back pocket, and a monologue from ‘For Colored Girls.’ It’s just part of what you should have, as a woman of color.
I always prided myself on the fact that I could live out of milk crates forever. It was kind of my way of detaching from materialism.
I come from the theater and I plan to always do theater. So I don’t really see myself not being able to act even if people don’t think I am sexy enough for film at 40, I’ll still be acting.
You may not be thinking about politics, but politics is thinking about you.
We don’t come out of the womb filled with prejudice, racism, and homophobia. Kids are taught to hate, so we have to protect our young people’s minds from those evils.
I really love research. It’s one of the things I love most about my job. I feel like it’s me in the lab cooking up the character.
I wouldn’t just come home from school and watch TV everyday, they had me involved in lots of local theatre. I was a very dramatic, talkative child. And that was part of my mother’s creative solution – to put me in workshops and classes and children’s theatre programmes.
People don’t think about the fact that when Barack Obama’s parents had him it was illegal for them to be married in several states in this country. So if we start making it okay that certain people can marry and other people can’t, it’s a slippery slope of civil rights.
It is important to have friends and family around that I love and trust and who love and trust me.
Sometimes it’s hard for me to tell the difference between independent filmmaking and studio filmmaking because all the studios have these little independent satellites. It’s interesting.
I think all of us in our lives feel like we can’t make a difference or we can’t make a change or it’s too late or we’re too tired or we’re too scared.
There are already a number of gatherings centered around women of color who are doing inspiring work.
From what I’ve been told, the scariest part of being part of a domestic abuse relationship is the idea that you cannot escape and you cannot get help, that feeling of being stuck.
I think my first big heartbreak made me more compassionate about other people’s heartaches. It enabled me to feel more for others when they are in moments of pain.
You’re able to make a real difference. If a woman’s able to step away financially, she’s able to begin to do all the other work.
There are so many untold stories when it comes to great women of color.
I’d never really heard of financial abuse, although it makes so much sense when you hear it defined.
When somebody shows up at your job and jeopardizes your job, yelling and screaming, that’s financial abuse. It threatens your ability to take care of yourself.
We have the ability to be the heroes of our families, our communities and our lives. It’s important to remind people of that truth: you have what it takes to make an impact. What is your hero’s journey?