The core for everything is to be grateful. It's literally as simple as that... I've always known that I'm lucky to be an actress, and I'm lucky to be a working actress. I'm lucky to have garnered attention for certain roles, and I'm grateful for it.
I've been very lucky and been able to work, as an actress, but I'm definitely a working actress. I get a script, I audition, and then I pray.
The good news for me is that I have an amazing team behind me, and they've been with me for 20 years now - almost 20 years. And they have seen me as an actress, not necessarily just a black actress. So I have been lucky enough for them to see me that way.
As far as co-parenting is concerned, it is easy. You just have to be mature enough to work together, mature enough to keep your professional and personal life apart.
I don't know why I was lucky enough to have people in my community take me in. To be able to continue school. Or why I was lucky enough to find work or go to college. I do know that kind of luck is one in a million.
I had to grow the hair down there. But because of years of waxing, as all of us girls know, it doesn't come back quite the way it used to. They even made me a merkin - a wig - because they were so concerned that I might not be able to grow enough.
'Big Time Rush' was a great show, and I had some great experiences. It allowed me to become more of a comedic actress, which is also a great skill to have. But there wasn't a whole lot of tragedy in there. Not quite as dark as 'Red Band Society.' So I've been very lucky to have been able to grow in that sense, just through moving to FOX.
For me, the natural world is always telling big stories about humongous scales of time. And I often feel simultaneously terrified and humbled by those scales and in awe, and delighted that I get to be here; that I'm lucky enough, that we are lucky enough to get experience these things for the tiny finger snap of time that we get to be on Earth.
To get married and have a family, is to grow up and mature. It's the only way. You can read philosophy books for a hundred years, but if you don't get married and have a family you will never get it. They soften you and shape you, mature you. Absolutely.
What Sam Walton did was to go into one of the most mature industries of all and find a way to make it grow, grow, grow, double-digit, month after month, year after year. He did it by innovation, customer focus, and above all, speed.
Because of the enormous responsibility, diabetic kids tend to grow up to be the most mature, most realistic people who have a natural desire to reach outside of themselves.
I hope we'll get lucky enough to grow old together.
Education is huge for me. I went to public school until I turned thirteen, and was lucky enough to afford college once I became successful as an actress.
I had no idea of being a star, all I knew was that I wanted to be a great actress, I wanted to work as an actress. So I thought the way I would be a great actress was to sing and dance first. Lay a foundation - get my foot in the door, and then undoubtedly, of course, I would be offered great roles as soon as I grew up enough to handle them.
Over the years, you grow up, you mature and you see things in a different way, and it's reflected in the writing.
I'm lucky enough to occasionally be able to do something I love - write poems - and unlucky enough that what I love confuses and overwhelms me.