A Quote by Tessa Thompson

I grew up as a kid looking at artists like David Bowie and Prince; I really admired them. — © Tessa Thompson
I grew up as a kid looking at artists like David Bowie and Prince; I really admired them.
I knew about things like Iggy Pop and The Velvet Underground, weirdly, before I knew about David Bowie. I didn't know what David Bowie was, when I was a kid. I thought he was like Visage.
If you took a couple of David Bowies and stuck one of the David Bowies on the top of the other David Bowie, then attached another David Bowie to the end of each of the arms of the upper of the first two David Bowies and wrapped the whole business up in a dirty beach robe you would then have something which didn't exactly look like John Watson, but which those who knew him would find hauntingly familiar.
I'm someone who admires artists like Madonna and David Bowie, who really change their sound drastically between each record.
I was looking at people like Jim Morrison and David Bowie and Mick Jagger and I thought, Ah! I want to look like them.
Prince didn't want to sound like Michael Jackson. Neither of them wanted to sound like Luther Vandross. They didn't want to sound like David Bowie. They were all different, but brilliant.
I just really care about what people see. I want them to know that I'm working hard for this. The artists that I look up to like, you know, Michael, Prince, James Brown. You watch them and you understand that they're paying attention to the details of their art. And they care so much about what they're wearing, about how they're moving, about how they're making the audience feel. They're not phoning it in. They're going up there to murder anybody that performs after them or performs before them. That's what I've watched my whole life and admired.
I was in L.A. with my wife in a restaurant, and I spotted my great hero David Bowie at another table. Of course I wasn't going to bother him. Then I felt a tap on my shoulder, and it was Bowie, and he squatted down to talk to me. David Bowie came down to my level - so gentlemanly.
I was the kid in the class who was looking for the angles to question things or make wise-ass remarks, not knowing enough to be afraid of being myself or showing intelligence. But I wasn't the only kid like that in my classes because of where I grew up. I'm really thankful I grew up in a town where there were a lot of other mutant kids. I'm from Boulder, Colorado, which went through a lot of dramatic changes when I was growing up.
David Bowie's death came out of the blue, as did Prince's.
The extremes of who I'd love to be onstage are David Bowie, Prince, and, I don't know, Bjork.
When I was growing up, David Bowie was my idol. I grew up in inner-city London, and he was from Brixton, which is even more urban.
David Bowie used to cover loads of people, and there was an element of "David Bowie did it, so we wanted to do it," because we're kind of obsessed [with him].
I grew up and I've worked with people who have been very present, a) either always jumping to whatever is most modern technologically advanced sort of thing, or b) people in this industry, like Kevin Smith, who, his communication with his fans is hugely connected to his success. And he was talking about that years ago. And David Bowie was doing that years ago. And Prince was doing that years ago.
It's fun to look at people that are so good at acting that aren't actors, like David Bowie creating a mystique about rock n' roll. I've listened to 'Ziggy Stardust' as much as any rock n' roll fan - I don't really know what it's about, but it sure is fun to think about David Bowie as this mad creation.
I would probably say David Bowie and Prince are the perfect people. They dress feminine/masculine and they're really sexy. Not many people can wear high heels and look sexier than a woman!
I'd never seen anything like it in my life. Someone so blatantly challenging the ideas of race and gender and sexuality. In a way, it was comparable to David Bowie, except that Prince brought that to the black community.
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