Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I do a lot. I don't like to sit still. I am pretty spontaneous. I like to cook a lot. I like to eat. I like to workout, surf, read, write, and create. I am always working on a couple of projects that I always have and need to put more time into.
Sometimes you're overthinking, you convince yourself to get out of it and you're like, "Ah I shoulda did that!" You can't live life with regrets. Sometimes you just gotta indulge. But in the same breath, you gotta have restraint and self-control too.
When I trained for 'Creed,' I had about a year in advance to know what I was doing before. So I lived like a fighter, you know? I went through the workout routine, the diet, training with real boxers, training with real trainers, did the whole thing.
I feel like you have to pull from some personal experiences [to acting]. At least that's how I work sometimes. It's just easier that way. And I try it as best as I can and kind of dissolve myself and become a character, not me, or just blur the lines.
We all use texting as a crutch because it's so easy and it doesn't really stop our day for the most part but I think to assure a woman you want to go out, to see that you're serious, you take the extra effort to pick up the phone and make a phone call.
L.A. is cool. If I could have the rest of my family out there, I think it would make it that much better for me. As far as work and the weather, you can't really beat it. I just wish they had the New York social life out there. That would make it perfect.
I'm an athlete; I've got an ego when stunt doubles have to come in. Not an ego like that, but when it comes to physical stuff, if I didn't have to have a stunt double, I would always probably do it myself unless the producers were jumping in and stopping me.
I think history repeats itself. There's a constant conversation between the oppressed and the oppressor. No matter what your field is, whether it's gender equality, the Time's Up movement, or diversity casting, it's always going to be a back-and-forth battle.
Being named Michael Jordan - I think growing up playing sports and having a name like Michael Jordan - and I was extremely competitive - I used to get teased a lot. But it made me want to strive for greatness and be able to compete at whatever I decided to do.
For me the movie [Fruitvale Station ] wasn't about that. The movie's about [Oscar Grant] life. And what happens on the platform is a very short part of the film. It's from Oscar's perspective. From the perspectives of the relationships that he's involved with.
You start at a young age, going on auditions, and you think you did a good job and expect to get that role, and you don't, and it's a letdown, a disappointment. So you tell yourself to just do the work and disconnect, because you have no control over the outcome.
I definitely want to direct. This is just another learning experience for me, to get a chance to hear the questions and concerns the directors have, some of their fears. It's a team sport. You have to give everybody what they need so they are able to perform at their best.
It's the African-American experience. You've got to wear different masks. When you're in the hood, if you stand out, you get picked on for being weak. Sometimes you have to hide your intelligence. In front of your boys, you might put on a bit of bravado, be a little bit tougher.
You see somebody like me, as young as I was at the time, driving around the inner city of Newark, and to them [police] it doesn't make sense. I've been illegally searched [and had] my car illegally searched. [I've] been handcuffed for no reason. You get in enough of those situations.
To the trolls on the internet, I want to say: Get your head out of the computer. Go outside and walk around. Look at the people walking next to you. Look at your friends' friends and who they're interacting with. And just understand this is the world we live in. It's okay to like it.
As a naturally reserved and quiet person, it's definitely a challenge being thrust into this atmosphere of celebrity and everything that comes along with that. Some parts I'm resisting more than others but can't for much longer, so I'm just trying to find a way to make sense of it all.
When I hear people comparing Mike's [Jordan] work to Denzel [Washington] I think it's amazing.. Because Denzel is such an amazing, textured actor. And I think that that comes with Mike too. I'm not thinking about how they look, though; I'm thinking about what they're able to accomplish.
Phone calls are much more personal than texting and then when you get a girl on the phone, it's like you ask a question and you get a response back. For a text message, they can read it and get back to it whenever they want to. So that makes a difference, almost like a power play in a way.
I like being able to do all of my own stunts. I appreciate stunt guys and what they do and, of course, the time and the effort that they put in, but for me, I'm young. You only live once, so to be able to do all your own stunts, train, become a real fighter... I feel like I can hold my own.
[Kyle Chandler] taught me how to listen very well and reacting. There's a lot of improv. And to be able to do that on the spot you really have to be in tune with what the other person is saying instead of just waiting for your cue line or waiting for a word for you to deliver your next line.
I love telling the experience of a black male in America, but modern, not always having to go back to a period piece to remind people where we come from. It's more a modern sense of where we are today and where we want to go in the future. So I try to choose projects somewhere around that space.
Being compared to that man [Michael Jordan], who has accomplished so much in his lifetime and is known as one of the greatest ever, is an amazing compliment, but I still want to be looked at as an individual and have my own lane and my own career and looked at as "That's Mike." "That' s Michael B."
Independent film making is very collaborative. You feel like it's you, the director and other actors and you really feel like you have the final say. When you do the bigger films, the studio has to give the final thumbs up and they're usually not big on risk taking because they're trying to make money.
Sometimes family doesn't always consist of your relatives or by blood. Sometimes your best friends can feel more like family than your cousins. I think everybody kind of has that same feeling. When you go through an accident together, when you go through a traumatic event, sometimes that brings you closer together.
I've always been a fan of AXE and when I heard about their new product and they sent it out to me for me to try and smell and I was like, oh man. It's hard for me to talk about something I don't care about or I'm not really into but once I tried it out for myself I was like, wow okay I can get into this [ collaboration].
How are people who are young and look like Oscar [Grant] portrayed in the media? You gotta think about that. And somebody given a badge and a gun and told to go police in those communities, all of a sudden they got to protect and serve and talk to people they never even spent time with [and] they might have formed opinions about.
The fact that there aren't an abundance of African-American males that are getting lead roles [and] that are getting roles that have prominence on the big screen. [It's] the same thing from behind the camera; maybe even worse. Coming up, when you're black and you want to direct somebody says, "Oh, you're Spike Lee" or "You're John Singleton."
I'm just looking forward to doing these videos with AXE. Doing more directing, collaborating with them, finding ways to kind of like tap into temptation with their market and their audience and mine and find cool, creative ways to get the brand out to people. And I think they're doing a really, really good job. So we've got some cool stuff coming up.
Chicago PD has a rule that if you work in Chicago you have to live in Chicago. Some areas don't have that rule.So oftentimes you get people from different environments that get thrown into environments with people that they never spent time with before in they life. On a daily basis or in their personal life. The only access they had to these type of people was through the media.