I grew up watching people and companies commercialize Black History Month. I watched old McDonald's commercials, and they'd blacken up the commercials for 28 days then go back to normal in March. It got annoying to me.
A month before graduation I got an off-Broadway job. Then I did some commercials, including one for MCI. You can only see half of me, but it paid well. Thank God for commercials.
I grew up watching movies and television, and one day, when I was really young, I told my mom I wanted to become an actor, and she was really supportive and got me involved in local theater and commercials.
I grew up watching movies and television, and one day when I was really young I told my mom I wanted to become an actor, and she was really supportive and got me involved in local theater and commercials. From there I moved up to auditioning for movies and television.
I grew up in the business since I was three years old so I've always kind of been in front of the camera and grew up in commercials and I knew that I wanted to do it no matter what, I just loved it.
I got a part in a package of commercials for this big drugstore from the age of 6 to 10. For four years I shot those commercials, and old ladies would stop me on the street and grab my cheeks. That's how it started.
I grew up with free television. Now, it wasn't free, there was these commercials, and so the economic model was driven through commercials and through advertising.
I grew up watching 'Ghostbusters' and 'Knight Rider' and Hot Wheels commercials. When I got to college, having never set foot in America, I knew more American pop-culture references than my friends did.
TIVO executives stand up and say, 'Well, we're not getting rid of commercials, but we are letting them fast forward, because people like commercials, and if they see one that they like they stop and watch it.' I mean, please.
I don't want to sound conceited, but people were intrigued with me and thought I was crazy and the word got around about this wacky disc jockey who could do 10 commercials in 10 minutes - what I did was make fun of the commercials.
When we moved to L.A., I started going out for more commercials, and then one day they emailed me a movie script. The first thing I said was, 'No way. I love commercials.'
Back in the old days, everyone was shocked if a band had a sponsor for their tour. Now, Bob Dylan can do a commercial for Victoria's Secret and people don't really blink; the Beatles' songs are in all sorts of commercials these days and it doesn't seem to offend anybody. The times are changing.
It was always fun auditioning for commercials, because that was the beginning of my career, and me figuring out how I was going to portray myself as an actress vs. a model, because models were very different back then in the early '70s. They didn't usually hire models for acting. But I acted first in commercials and then I did modeling, so it was a little different.
Black History Month is dedicated to heroes that paved the way for Black people. It's a month that's very imperative because it gives those who lack the knowledge of our heroes a chance to gain insight. It's not just about the month, it's about the years that it took for us to get to this one month and it's beyond placing a value on how much Black History Month really means to me.
I grew up on what everybody called a plantation - but believe me, it wasn't a plantation. It was just an old farm. I grew up with a lot of black people working in the fields, and it was during the Depression between 1930 and the war, so we were all poor - black and white.
Seeing my son getting roughed up by the police is not fun. It brings back memories of when I got roughed up by them. He grew up totally different than how I grew up, and to me, he shouldn't have to go through that.
Candy bar companies, through commercials, have tied their products to low-energy cues, transforming what was once a dessert into a pick-me-up for cubicle dwellers.