Every role I've ever taken has never had anything do to with size. It's never been something I've wanted to be cheap about. Luckily, my agents and managers have always supported that.
I've never taken a job as an actor that I wasn't 100-percent sure I wanted to do. I've never had to think about whether or not I wanted to do something, and there have always been a lot of factors to that. I don't think I'm an actor who's driven by character, to be honest.
If priests had not been fond of mutton, lambs never would have been sacrified to god. Nothing was ever carried to the temple that the priest could not use, and it always happened that god wanted what his agents liked.
My son was a goalkeeper in soccer, and he luckily never had much head trauma. He never had any concussions or anything. I really wanted him to play football, but now I'm thankful he didn't.
Truth is, something that I thought was perfect was taken away from me, and I never wanted perfect again. I wanted middle of the road, stuff I didn’t care about so that I couldn’t lose anything I really loved ever again.
I take every role seriously. Personally, I never look at any role as Michael White. I've done that my entire life. I've never excluded myself because of color. It's never been part of the radar, when I look at anything I do. The majority of the roles that I've played have had very little to do with being black. It doesn't matter what color you are.
I never had any ambition to do anything commercial, anything journalistic. I wanted to be an artist, and I wanted to be an artist whose work was done in the medium of photography. It may be debatable to this day whether I ever succeeded in achieving that ambition, but the point is, I never had any uncertainty about that.
All the plays that have ever been written, from ancient Greece to the present day, have never really been anything but thrillers... Drama's always been realistic and there's always been a detective about... Every play's an investigation brought to a successful conclusion.
I'm not involved in politics, and I've never had any political role. I've never been in office. I've never taken any public administrative jobs.
I'd never even seen orange cheese. I mean, who decided to make that orange? And so there was something different about me that they wanted to crush. I don't think it had anything to do with my physicality, but every single day in school it was, "You're the ugliest thing I've ever seen."
There's actually a time when I got cast in something and it was announced that someone else was cast. I hadn't been told yet if I had the role and I had a breakdown because I really wanted it and it was announced on this website that this other girl had gotten it. I was so sad and called my agents and said, "You guys didn't tell me this other person got the role!" They were like, "No, they haven't decided yet." Then two hours later I got the call that said I had the role.
It's not that acting was something I'd always wanted to do. I had no formal training; I'd never really imagined I'd be an actress. Business was something that had always been in my mind, but when I got into acting, I learned everything on set, and for me at that point, I wanted to excel at what I did.
You know, I've never believed, in anything, that you had to have role models who looked like you to do something. If I'd been waiting for a black, female, soviet specialist role model, I'd be still waiting.
My mom always brought home a present once a week for all of us. We never felt like we ever needed anything. We never felt poor. So I never felt I had to go out and do something wrong to get money.
I went from being totally unknown to getting stopped every time I went out. I always wanted to be successful, but I have never wanted to become a celebrity. I never, ever, craved that.
We'd had books in my house growing up, but we had never had anything like lectures. I had never written an essay for my mother. I had never taken an exam. Because I was working a lot as a kid, I just hadn't elected to read that much.
Have you ever noticed that Jesus is never recorded as taking a holiday? He retired for the purposes of his mission, not from it. He was never destroyed by his work; he was always on top of it. He moved among people as the master of every situation. He was busier than anyone; the multitudes were always at him, yet he had time, for everything and everyone. He was never hurried, or harassed, or too busy. He had complete supremacy over time; he never let it dictate to him. He talked of my time; my hour. He knew exactly when the moment had come for doing something and when it had not.