I rock because sometimes I'm scared and that's alright. I rock because I'm not afraid to cry. I rock because I'm loved and I'm able to love. I rock...I rock.
I think personal power is having the availability to say, 'No' to something, whatever that may be.
We actors can't say every line as if it has weight, but what we want to do is be true to the meaning of each line, whatever it is. Even the lines that are throwaway may come back later.
I have a lot of friends who are in mixed race relationships who are gay. But I think that the reason it bothers people is because there is not enough representation, even in the straight world, of people loving people who look like them.
Somebody came and directed a show at my high school. I approached it with sort of the sensibility - "Oh, I know that music. I'm going to go audition." I ended up being in it and I sang and it was mind-altering - to me, to my parents, who had never heard me sing like that. It put a stop to everything else that I was doing - every sport that I played, every instrument, it was all dropped because nothing felt like that. I feel really lucky that I found my passion at that point. There are people who are adults who don't know what their passion is and go through life doing "a job."
Athletes and actors do really crazy things and we do them under weird circumstances because we love what we do and because we take things in an extreme manner.
Very often the people who are shooting your film do not look like you if your film is brown-centric in some way. What is very interesting is to be going through these scenarios and turning around and looking at so many faces that are not yours. Even though those faces are looking at you in love, it puts you in a space when you are on a plantation in that condition. I think that it allows you to see further into possibly what that place really was for someone else, except thank God we're with people who love and respect us.
The seventies was a time when a lot of people didn't tell their children they were adopted.
Regardless of whether or not the producers think that there are five other people waiting for the job, the one that is there needs to be treated as if they are the only person for the job in that moment.
I think what's happening in Hollywood is a direct reflection of what's happening in the world right now.
I think there needs to be more care taken for the actor. You know, we are not props!
I feel like if you are going to come to somebody who you don't even know on a worldwide platform, then your idiocy needs to be seen worldwide so it can get smacked down. And that's what just needs to happen with some people.
I've been in New York for 14 years. I would never leave for good. The city is so much more alive than so many other places, and I think it is fodder for performers. You see so much; research is thrown at you everywhere you go. There was a rat on the subway train recently - you saw the video online - that's fantastic! That's something that is so specific to this city, the way you are pushed up against humanity, and the animal kingdom, whether you want to be or not. It's a stimulating city - physically, intellectually, culturally. It never ceases to thrill me.
I think the New York theater audience is very savvy. Sometimes you get newbies who think they're going to be watching Smash onstage, and sometimes you have people who have been coming to theater for years. It's the combination of those people in an audience that makes for a pretty amazing night - their ability to give each other permission to react and enjoy, in a way that maybe they wouldn't if they weren't sitting next to each other.
I'm not on Twitter for abuse. I don't think anyone's gotten on Twitter so that they can be abused, but people do go on Twitter to abuse people. When that becomes clear then Twitter has a moral duty to shut those people down when they see that somebody is there solely for the purpose of abusing others. Yeah you have free speech, but what you don't have is the right to wield your speech like a cudgel to somebody who has done nothing to earn it.
