I do want to be in mainstream movies that are going to be seen. I suppose it satisfies the showbiz side of me.
I'm not attracted to naturalism, I'm not attracted to behavior, I'm attracted to dance. I'm attracted to gesture, I'm attracted to singing with your voice, as opposed to having a natural manner. I'm a theater actor first, so that probably influences ...
I'm fighting the label of 'Black' actress simply because it's very limiting in people's eyes, especially people who are making movies.
Some say Hollywood movies that are made about boxing are just metaphors for other things, I think I've made one that's actually about boxing and not a metaphor.
I wouldn't not want to be a director and write as I wouldn't not to want to be a writer and direct movies.
Americans wanted to settle all our difficulties with Russia and then go to the movies and drink Coke.
I do other sorts of things. I act in other people's movies. I direct operas. I write books.
What's really frustrating with movies is the lack of improvement.
There are two different forms of storytelling: Novels tend to come from the inside of a character, and movies tend to look at them from the outside in relation to others in their world.
Like the Negro League players, I traveled through the segregated south as a young man. Because I was black, I was denied service at many restaurants and could only drink from water fountains marked 'Colored.' When I went to the movies, I would have t...
I'm not a real movie star. I've still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago.
I'm quite comfortable looking at myself in movies, probably because I've been doing it for so long, since I was a kid. So I sort of watched myself grow up and go through adolescence, like, basically on camera.
I loved movies, but I can't remember ever really wanting to be an actress, and I certainly didn't imagine ever being in a movie. I think I wanted to be a writer.
People think that they just want movies like Pretty Woman, when really they - at least the ones that I know personally - have been waiting for something that doesn't completely insult them.
If I showed you scripts from my first few movies, the descriptions of my characters all said 'the ugly girl'.
I've loved making movies. I feel like I've been so lucky because I've gotten to be in movies that are some of my favorites, regardless of my being in them - like 'Heathers.'
In terms of number of movies, I've been in an extraordinary amount. If you count only the minutes I'm onscreen, it's not so long.
I think with movies I am really connecting to the Joseph Campbell idea of the collective unconscious.
Some of my ideas were shot down by Lucasfilm because they stepped on territory that has been reserved for the movies. I didn't have a problem with that.
I made over forty Westerns. I used to lie awake nights trying to think up new ways of getting on and off a horse.
For years all I seemed to be doing was lobbying politicians and others to persuade them that European culture needed movies, and that we had to protect it.
