A Quote by Taraji P. Henson

I talked to Katherine Johnson, and I tried to make it weighty by asking things like, "How as a Black woman did you do your work in NASA? They were misogynistic, and I'm sure you got called the n-word." She was just like, "Well, that was the way it was. I just did my job. I wanted to do my job." She was just so humble.
This is so much harder than I ever thought it would be...because the thing is, even if you're just working part-time, your boss is going to expect a full week's worth of work, no matter how understanding she is. That's just the nature of the working world-things have to get done, babies or not. And if you're like me-if you're like any woman who ever did well in school and did well at her job-you don't want to disappoint a boss. And you want to do a good job raising your baby...It's not like you think it's going to be
Katherine Johnson passion for math, the way I light up when I get asked questions about acting is the way her eyes danced when she talked about math and how she wanted people to fall in love with numbers the way that she did. If I had a teacher like that, I could have been a rocket scientist.
I have to tell you that June Cleaver had a job in 'The New Leave It to Beaver.' She did. Sure, she was a council woman. She went to work. She wasn't a sit-at-home grandma. She went out, got a job.
When you did the job, you thought you were just trying to amuse your friends who are all on the job. I'm just trying to make the sound guy laugh, the script supervisor. A movie like Caddyshack, I can walk on a golf course and some guy will be screaming entire scenes at me and expecting me to do it word for word with him. It's like, 'Fella, I did that once. I improvised that scene. I don't remember how it goes'. But I'm charmed by it. I'm not like, 'Hey, knock it off'. It's kind of cool.
Katherine Johnson never complained, it just was what it was. She just said, "I just wanted to go to work and do my numbers." And she stopped right there. I think about that as a Black woman in Hollywood when I'm asked about diversity. I hate when people say diversity because the first thing you jump to is Black and white. When you talk about diversity, you're talking about women being hired in front of and behind the camera. You are talking about people with disabilities, the LGBTQ community...so I hate when people think about diversity.
When we were trying to find the woman to play Maura Isles, it was a no-brainer when Sasha came in. We just knew it was her, and she did such a fantastic job. She got the job, right then and there, in the room, and it was great. We actually played a little joke on her. She's a great lady and we've had a really, really fantastic time.
A friend, who's a psychologist, told me about a patient once: a woman who was well educated, had a good job, a house and a loving husband. "I did everything right in my life," said the woman. "But I'm still not happy." She never did what she herself wanted, but what she believed society expected from her.
Katherine Heigl, she was exactly the opposite of what I thought she'd be like. She smokes cigarettes, or she did then, and she's got a truck-driver's mouth, and she's really funny.
Just like Marilyn Monroe is a lot of girls' idol, that's how I feel about Dorothy Dandridge. And she any Marilyn were very close friends. She went through a lot, and people told her that she couldn't do certain things, but she didn't let that bother her. She said in her mind that she was going to do them and that nothing was impossible, and she did it. It was so sad... She died from drugs, and drinking as well.
A lot of people ask, 'How did you start the business, and how did you do it money-wise?' And the truth is that I had three jobs. A day job, an evening job, and then designing my collection as well. That's just how we did it.
Go to a playground: Little girls get called 'bossy' all the time, a word that's almost never used for boys. And that leads directly to the problems women face in the workforce. When a man does a good job, everyone says, 'That's great.' When a woman does that same thing, she'll get feedback that says things like, 'Your results are good, but your peers just don't like you as much' or 'maybe you were a little aggressive.'
I think a person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money - has turned himself into a slave. Work begins when you don't like what you're doing. There's a wise saying: make your hobby your source of income. Then there's no such thing as work, and there's no such thing as getting tired. That's been my own experience. I did just what I wanted to do. It takes a little courage at first, because who the hell wants you to do just what you want to do; they've all got lots of plans for you. But you can make it happen.
My mother was supportive without knowing it. Deep down she wanted all the right things, she just didn't see the world like I did, and she's not supposed to.
No matter what set she's been on over the last 12 years, my mother always finds a way to get in the way. Not in a bad way. Like, she once got caught on a law show I did called 'Philly' trying to take a picture - she was caught on-camera in the background. She does things like this.
I got a chance to get an actual label. I performed this slow song, this ballad I have. I just remember going to the first woman I saw in the room and just getting on my knees holding her hand just singing. And I was like, you know what, I got to just sell it. I remember that day they were like, yo we want to sign you. [After] I went into the bathroom, I started crying, [and] I called my mom. I was like momma – I did it.
My grandmother is still a woman who worries about what she looks like when she goes outside. She's from that era, and I can remember saying to her, 'Grandmother, we're just going to the grocery store.' And she'd be like, 'I've got to fix my face!' You were very aware of how you were presenting yourself to society in 1960s Las Vegas.
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