Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Part of being an artist is that you are always concerned you don't have what it takes. It keeps us honest.
I feel privileged that people are looking up to me and perhaps a dream will be born because of my presence.
It doesn't escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else's.
I feel privileged that people are looking up to me, and perhaps a dream will be born because of my presence.
I love color. I'm enjoying trying all different shades. Makeup isn't something I've worn a lot of in my life.
Part of being an artist is that you are always concerned you don't have what it takes. It... keeps us honest.
I realized that beauty was not a thing that I could acquire or consume, it was something that I just had to be.
I grew up in the limelight and being the child of someone famous. So my relationship with fame is not bedazzled.
I am very emotional about politics in a way that makes it hard for me to articulate things in a rational fashion.
Being called gorgeous is not a bad thing! But at the same time, I don’t want to thrive on people’s opinions of me.
I had moved back to Kenya after undergrad, and I went through this crisis of, 'What is my life going to be about?'
Even in my dreams of being an actor, my dream was not in the celebrity. My dream was in the work that I wanted to do.
My conscious life has all been in Kenya, and it's my point of reference. But going back to Mexico was very formative.
Steve McQueen is a genius. And I think that word is overused, but I think with Steve it's rightly used. He's a genius.
I grew up in Nairobi, which is the capital of Kenya, so it's hustle and bustle, and there's always something going on.
As human beings, what makes us able to empathize with people is a connection that is not necessarily understood mentally.
I've worked hard to feel beautiful in my natural skin. Personally, I don't ever want to depend on makeup to feel beautiful.
I come from a very close class. I lucked out because drama schools are often very competitive... I have fourteen classmates.
I never, in my wildest dreams, could I have thought that the first role I get out of school would lead to an Oscar nomination.
I would love to have a career that's governed by the material; I always want to be part of stories that I feel are worthwhile.
The muscles you flex in theater are muscles that you really need. I must always find a way to get back there. It's irreplaceable.
I definitely intend to create my own work in the future so that we don't have to keep saying, We don't have work for black women.'
There have been rumors and rumors and rumors about my love life. That's the one area that I really like to hold close to my heart.
It's in understanding yourself deeply that you can lend yourself to another person's circumstances and another person's experience.
All throughout filming '12 Years a Slave,' there was a focus like no other. Everyone took ownership of this film and gave their all.
I discovered that joy is not the negation of pain, but rather acknowledging the presence of pain and feeling happiness in spite of it.
It's great to have something to dress up for. You know, I spent three years in slacks at drama school, so now I like putting a dress on.
I had this vivid image of myself at the age of 60 looking back on my life and truly regretting the fact that I hadn't tried to be an actor
I have the opportunity to learn about the fashion world, and I appreciate it as an art form... But I never want it to take over my acting.
It's only when you risk failure that you discover things. When you play it safe, you're not expressing the utmost of your human experience.
Every time I overcome an obstacle, it feels like success. Sometimes the biggest ones are in our head - the saboteurs that tell us we can't.
I do my best work when I feel conviction to say something through the character I play. Always I want to have integrity and not compromise that.
I thought I was going to school to be other people, but really, what I learned was to be myself - accepting myself, my strengths and weaknesses.
I spent some time back in Mexico at 16 because my parents thought it would be prudent for me to learn Spanish, because I held a Mexican passport.
I have always loved children. I've been fantasizing about motherhood since I was probably 2 ½. I loved to babysit my cousins, and nieces, you know.
I hope we can form a community where a woman can speak up about abuse and not suffer another abuse by not being believed and instead being ridiculed.
That you will feel the validation of your external beauty but also get to the deeper business of being beautiful inside. There is no shade in that beauty.
Before the advent of the white man, black people were doing all kinds of things with their hair. The rejection of kinks and curls did come with the white man.
Whoopi Goldberg looked like me, she had hair like mine, she was dark like me. I'd been starved for images of myself. I'd grown up watching a lot of American TV.
I grew up watching foreign programs - American, English, Mexican, and very little Kenyan. 'The Color Purple' was the first time I saw people who looked like me.
The first time I cut all my hair off was when I was 19. I just got fed up going to the salon every week. I'd had enough! On a whim, it was off. It's low-maintenance.
My immediate family was always very supportive. It was my own fear of the rest of the world not accepting me, the rest of our society not accepting my wish to be an actor.
Drama is my sweet spot, but the thing about being an actor is that you want to do a variety of things. I definitely love fantasy and would want to be in a fantasy project.
That's such a powerless place for me to think about: what is working against me. I don't think of what I don't have; I think of what I do and use that to get the next thing.
My father was a professor of political science and also a young politician fighting for democracy in Kenya, and when things got ugly, he went into political exile in Mexico.
I love filmmaking, but I decided to go to drama school because I thought that when I'm 60 and looking back on my life, if acting hadn't been a part of it, I would hate myself.
I'm interested in generating work for myself. I have trouble with this waiting-for-the-phone-to-ring lifestyle, especially after drama school, which was so creatively fulfilling.
I am thrilled beyond words that The Academy has recognized my performance in Steve McQueen's '12 Years a Slave,' and I am deeply proud to be in the company of my fellow nominees.
I didn't love my hair when I was a child. It was lighter than my skin, which made me not love it so much. I was really kind of envious of girls with thicker, longer, more lush hair.
I don't need to be so full of myself that I feel I am without flaw. I can feel beautiful and imperfect at the same time. I have a healthy relationship with my aesthetic insecurities.