A Quote by Chiwetel Ejiofor
I had done a couple of auditions for 'Amistad' and didn't feel it was going to go any further - and then the call came about heading to Los Angeles to work with Steven Spielberg. It was surreal: exciting, challenging, overwhelming.
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I had written the script for Juno and apparently Steven Spielberg had read it. I can't just call him Steven, that's weird... Mr. Spielberg had read it and he liked it. He asked me if I would write this television show for him and I said, 'Yeah!'
I worked with Steven Spielberg on Amistad... he seemed so very secure in himself that he let me do things.
I don't live in Los Angeles. I work in Los Angeles, and even that - I audition in Los Angeles; I very rarely film in Los Angeles. I don't hang out with producers on my off-hours, so I don't even know what that world is like.
When I won the Oscar, I fell into that mind-set that this is a precious role. People everywhere were shouting, 'Show me the money!' I just didn't want anything that could parody the fact that I was like a tagline in a movie. So when Steven Spielberg offered me 'Amistad,' I said no; when 'Hotel Rwanda' came along, I said no.
It might take me an hour to get to feel at ease with somebody. I don't find it easy to go into a room full of 10 people and give it all away. In the pilot season in Los Angeles I've done that a couple of times.
Always had a passion for acting since I could remember, but I started when I was ten going for short film and commercial auditions in Los Angeles with my mom's help!
By the time May rolls around, I'm probably going to want to spend a month on an island. But if Steven Spielberg or Steven Soderbergh or any number of directors were to say 'Hey, there's this role, are you interested?' I'd be there in a flash
By the time May rolls around, I'm probably going to want to spend a month on an island. But if Steven Spielberg or Steven Soderbergh or any number of directors were to say 'Hey, there's this role, are you interested?' I'd be there in a flash.
It was pretty fun [auditioning on the Millennium Falcon], because I enjoyed the material a lot. Last year I read for the directors, then came to England and did a test on the Falcon, then came back and did a couple more screen tests in Los Angeles.
When I first moved to Los Angeles I came down there on a wing and a prayer in a way. I had about six weeks worth of money to make it there and that was just from doing a couple of episodes of the X-Files just to finance that trip. I got there and it is either you got to hit it or you got to go and, thankfully, I found a job.
I was 20 when I moved to Los Angeles. I went on probably 600 commercial auditions and couldn't book any of them.
I love London and Los Angeles equally. I was born and brought up London and then I went to Los Angeles as a teenager to stay with my sister Joan. So I feel I belong to both.
I came out to Los Angeles for a couple of meetings in the summer of 2005, and I ended up getting a movie called Firehouse Dog for Fox. And I thought, "Oh, man. I'm doing a movie. Maybe I'll work a lot more now. I'm an actor now." Then, for eight, nine months I didn't work after that. After that movie, I began to get some guest star roles, fairly consistently, but because I had been so presumptuous before in thinking that the other jobs would lead to something, I realized: "Just get up. Go to work. Go home. This is your job just like everyone else's job."
I had come from Los Angeles - I had been there a partner of Gruen Associates, a large Los Angeles firm - and when the possibility of becoming a dean at Yale came, it was a very appropriate moment in my life. I was interested in a number of issues that I could not pursue while in a firm like Gruen's.
I think Los Angeles is often portrayed as kind of a petri dish, where bad decisions start and then spread to the rest of the world. I don't see it that way. I feel Los Angeles is a place of almost primal struggle and survival. It's not a city that embraces its inhabitants.
I like how you can go back and watch David Lean and John Ford and see the influence that had on Steven Spielberg, especially David Lean, in the camerawork, and yet, you don't watch any Spielberg movie and think of David Lean. Once you're looking for it, you see it all, but it's not in your face.
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