I've been blessed with the opportunity to express the views of black people who otherwise don't have access to power and the media. I have to take advantage of that while I'm still bankable.
Now, at this point, I can wrestle, I can go out there and cut an entertaining promo, I can also do the backstage stuff... and if you can contribute more to the show, you have more staying power.
Sometimes I feel people think I live on a commune but I don't. We are all solar, though. There are no power lines. It's mostly farmers, so everyone who has tractors uses bio-diesel.
I have done many comedy films. Success of films like 'Partner,' 'Singh is Kinng' gets you to a very wide audience reach. But for greater gains, you need to take greater gambles. If it works, you get respect and recognition.
A film has to be for commercial success as well as earn you respect as an artist. You don't want to do only things that are designed to run commercially, and neither do you want to do things that get acclaim but don't run.
Everybody sort of questioned why we get married on New Year's Day, and of course, the avid sports fans wouldn't come, because they had to watch the Rose Bowl or whatever that is on that day.
The difference in my body from pre-pregnancy to post-baby was night and day. I didn't have the strength, I didn't have the flexibility, I didn't have the stamina, I didn't have the mobility. I felt like I was handicapped.
I was the only child born to Josephine Perry that survived. Mama had six other children before me, and all had passed very quickly and very young, all succumbing to a combination of illness and disease and the lack of strength to fight off both.
Part of my strength as an actor comes from what I've learned all these years: when you play a villain, you try to get the light touches; when you play a hero, you try to get in some of the warts.
I left because I could no longer make records that sounded less and less like me. I tried to please people instead of believing in my own strength, until the only thing I could do was walk away.
The more I get to do this character, the more I realize that she's not just annoying. It's that her strength is not interacting with people socially. She just doesn't have time because she has so much going on in her brain.
There is something about my aura or essence, or whatever, that draws the ex-wife characters to me. I don't seek them out, but people tend to think of me for that particular archetype, or whatever you want to call it, and I don't mind it. I think ther...
I like roles of people who can overcome things because there's strength in that and an arc - and roles where they start in one place, and toward the end of the script they end up in a completely different place, so you've seen this growth and some hu...
I sort of consider myself a comedic actress, not a comedienne. I think it's different. You know, I'm not a stand-up or anything, but playing into comedic situations is sort of where, I think, my strength lies.
The fact that maybe I had some success playing G'Kar doesn't guarantee me three years later that I can still do it, so I have to keep my senses alive and still be working on it.
It's hard to appreciate success in modeling, because it's not something you feel like you've earned, so there is a little bit of bread of shame that comes with that. It's like somebody giving you a puzzle that's already put together.
At the very beginning, I was a page at Letterman, and I freelanced for any place that would let me write any word. I wanted to do this so badly. Then when I got a tiny bit of success, I was petrified that I was going to lose it.
My parents are very proud of my success but still worry, as I'm in a profession where there is no guarantee of work. They have always supported my decision to go into acting, but there have been tough times work-wise.
With the success of the last three or so years, when a lot of people start treating you differently, there's a danger that you may start to think of yourself differently. You rely on your friends to say, 'Hey, wake up!'
I had a lot of success from the start. I never really was tested for long periods of time. I got my first professional job while I was a senior in college. I signed with the William Morris Agency before I graduated.
After I tasted success with erotic thrillers, a time came when I was being offered only films belonging to that genre. The industry loves repeating a success formula, and the audience had formed a certain image of mine in their minds.
