A Quote by Tessa Thompson

I think, as an actor, when you're starting off early in your career, you're kind of just seeing what lands. But 'Veronica Mars' definitely primed me to look for surprising, dynamic women. It took me awhile to realize how cool that job was.
I've definitely grown, and I think I've done enough stuff that people might look at me only as Veronica Mars. But honestly, I really don't mind if they do.
Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job, I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: 'Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don't you realize that?' They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn't want to enter their minds.
When I was early in my career, I really followed Twitter, seeing what people were saying about me. I definitely saw them talking about Mr. Mankato and all that. It was fun for me to have a little bit of extra support from outside people. I definitely helped me build confidence, that's for sure.
I don't think that not seeing black women in comedy held me back, but I think subconsciously I never really thought that it was a career that I would definitely go into.
I don't think I have the stomach Veronica has. I think I have the determination and the stubbornness and a little bit of the go-get-em. But I think I'm about 20 percent more girl than Veronica is. There's a lot of Veronica that hits home with me, the sort of feisty area. But I think that I have a little bit more girl. I'd scream my head off if I saw a body in the freezer.
When Veronica Mars was canceled, the following season of pilots for The CW had been announced, and one was Gossip Girl. I read it, and I knew I was sort of old to play any of the kids. I called Dawn Ostroff -- who was the head of The CW at the time -- and said, 'Hey, I did so much narration on Veronica Mars, can I narrate this show? And she said, 'Hey, that's a very good idea.' They knew I had a younger voice, they liked me and they knew I'd show up for work, and I guess that was all I really needed. It was so clear to me how sassy and catty she needed to be.
There are some fabulous treasures of photos of me during the early days of my career; there are these pin-up photos that make me laugh: I look like the poor man's Maria Montez. But there are some I look at, and I didn't realize how sexy I looked back then.
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.
I worked with Jackie Chan for a long time, and seeing how much pain he's in, I realized that that might not be a sustainable career for me. So I started to develop my career as a dramatic actor rather than as an action actor.
I think my career will end too early for me to go to Mars, though I might be involved in preparing the next generation to go. I'd love to explore Mars, but, ultimately, it's kind of a crappy planet. The thing is, Mars One people would never go outside without a spacesuit ever again. You're going to live in a tin can. Space stations are noisy; it's like living inside a computer with the fan on all the time. You're never going to smell grass or trees. It's just never going to be anything like Earth. You're never going to swim. You're giving up so much.
To me, I was just doing my job when I took the field, but to understand how close I came to death, I now realize what God has given me when he brought me into this world; he knew what he was doing.
In my career as a double, a lot of my job is to not just do the fights to make them look cool, but also to appear as the same person as the actor I am playing.
As a young woman working in journalism, I assumed harassment and discrimination came with the territory and that you just had to get on with the job. As I rose to senior positions, it took me awhile to realise that just because I'd survived relatively unscathed didn't mean the younger women joining the profession would do so, and it isn't until you hit a certain age that the reality of ageism - which is much more acute for women - kicks in.
And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.
I think there's definitely much more opportunities for women now to find a role in 30s and 40s both. I think you're starting to find people really seeing that - here's the thing. It's hard for me to say and know the experience how it was ten, twenty years ago because I was only in my teens and my 20s, but I know from watching TV myself and watching film myself I see a lot more 30s and 40s on screen, which just makes me very, very happy. It's what we should be watching.
I just have that sort of face and when I got to Hollywood in the late '70s they took one look at me and said, 'Get him a gun. You definitely should be carrying a gun,' and so a lot of it is just the way I look. I look like I'm angry and dangerous, and in fact, I'm loveable and kind.
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