One thing that's great about being a character actor is that a movie doesn't rest on your shoulders. If it bombs, it won't hurt my career.
I've never done a superhero movie. It's very nice to you as an actor in several worlds to go and to experiment.
We actors always say how difficult and physically demanding a role was. But give me a break, it's only a movie.
I can't remember ever staying for the end of a movie in which the actors wore togas.
They can't make any of these talented young actors Fletch. You might as well make a movie called Chevy Chase.
An actor really is a kind of intermediary between an audience and the piece, whether it's a play or movie.
As a young actor, I booked a movie in the U.S. I didn't speak any English at the time, so I learned my lines phonetically when I auditioned for it.
I found my niche as a character actor, and I've never felt like a movie star or teen idol and never wanted to.
I'm an actor, but I'm also a feminist, and a lot of times in movies there are things that I cannot imagine happening that are on the screen and totally accepted. And I just go, 'Whaaat?'
You know when you watch old movies, it's always the small parts you remember, the character actors who come in like a breath of fresh air.
I imagine it was much different in the 1970s. That was the Renaissance for black actors, albeit in blaxploitation movies. There was a much greater preponderance of work then than there is now.
The thing about romance and romantic movies is that they can be somewhat melodramatic. For a lot of actors, there's a certain cringe factor that's involved with that.
Right now, if you're interested in being a dramatic actor, they're not making that many just regular dramas. Movies have to have some other thing going on.
So, one way or another, I found myself in a few movies. I take it seriously when I'm on the set, but I don't take myself seriously as an actor.
I watched so many comic book movies where the actors weren't as built as the characters in the book. It made me mad because they didn't look right.
In film, movies' schedules are based on three things: actors' availabilities, when are sets being built, when you can rent the place you're going to film in.
It's not like I sit around watching my movies again and again, but I've never quite believed actors when they say they don't watch themselves.
Some actors get by with behaving, not acting. You've got to sell the effect. I act more in the 'Nightmare' movies because it's not like me. I'm acting, not reacting.
I managed to get a short film with Channel 4 Films. I cast a young actor who'd done a bit of television before, a young actor called Ewan McGregor. That was very first thing. This writer had won this competition, and I made this little short, black a...
To be honest, I sort of feel like 'movie actor' isn't of this time. I love it. But it's a 20th-century art form.
One of the things I have an allergic reaction to playing, especially as a black actor, is the mandatory kind of best friend/cop/detective type. You will never see me in that movie.
