Struggle and survival, losing and winning, doesn't matter. It's entering the race that counts. You enter, you can win, you can lose .... but it's all about entering the race.
That's what he was saying, the civil rights movement - judge me for my character, not how black my skin is, not how yellow my skin is, how short I am, how tall or fat or thin; It's by my character.
Me, sexy? I'm just plain ol' beans and rice.
Our culture is revered and it inspires people all around the globe.
My passion is to tell stories that reflect humanity.
And as I reinvent myself and I'm constantly curious about everything, I can't wait to see what's around the corner in newfound art and entertainment and exploration.
I'm a big child at heart. I think it's important to stay that way and not lose the wonder of life.
Out of necessity comes genius.
Some day I want to play a grandmother. And a foxy one at that!
I really hate to see abusive behavior being passed on from generation to generation to generation, when we have access to health and counseling.
I never went in thinking, "You're an African-American woman, so you're never going to win." I was just in career doing beauty pageants for the experience, and to show my brains and talent and help break stereotypes. It wasn't like, "Oh, I'll become a star. I'm beautiful." I never thought I was pretty. I couldn't even put on eyelashes or makeup. When you come from an environment that's military, and they don't stress that topic of aesthetics or beauty pageants and makeup, there are a lot of things you just don't have that city girls have.
My grandfather was the first feminist in my life. He taught me if a woman can do something, a man will respect her.
There are just certain realities about our world and I just happen to be creative within it.
I like serious films, the moneymaking blockbusters that don't make any kind of sense and John Carpenter films.
I don't believe that I should just do A-movies, I just do the work as an artist.
If you're stupid and you're arrogant, you're going to get hurt.
Everyone else can do violence. You know, Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, they can all do shoot-'em-ups. Arnold Schwarzenegger can kill 10 people in one minute, and they don't call it "white exploitation." They win awards and get into all the magazines. But if black people do it, suddenly it's different than if a white person does it. People respond differently because people come from different places.
Women are allowed more freedoms and we're fighting for more freedoms, we're experiencing more freedoms won.
Each time you do a film you gain a lot of experience and build a visual resume where people get to know who you are.
Sometimes I'm angry, sometimes I'm not angry.
Me and my sisters were taught that if our eyes worked and our legs worked, we were beautiful. We had so many kids in our family that if we all got in front of the mirror and were ashamed of browns and golds and yellows and whites, and we believed what society told us - that the darker people were less attractive and the lighter ones were prettier - we would have had sibling murders. My family, being half-rural and half-military, just came from a different place.
I felt beauty was a magnet for abuse, and I had suffered greatly for it.
Yes, you can have art films about the triumph of the human spirit and all of that, but you'll have it done with a big-budget icon with a $20 million salary. You'll have Julia Roberts, you'll have Robert Redford, you'll have Russell Crowe doing those films, because if they're going to cost $90 million, they're going to make that movie for a public that's very large and mainstream. They're not going to make it for three or four million black people.
I came from poverty and was part of those circumstances.
Let's start working towards wellness, a healing in our community, a healing in relationships, so male and female can finally sit down and understand that that young boy or young girl saw behavior exhibited by their parents that was negative and abusive and they're going to pass it on.
