Television studios bet the farm on reality shows, where they didn't need any actors and movie studios had no plans for any quality movies that required the presence of me.
Alfre WoodardEverybody has a part of her body that she doesn't like, but I've stopped complaining about mine because I don't want to critique nature's handiwork ... My job is simply to allow the light to shine out of the masterpiece.
Alfre WoodardAmericans have a hard time writing moms. I'll get a script and everything's really great and well-drawn, but the mom is like stock footage, they go and get that out. They plug it in, this idea of "mother." You could lift moms out of any script, no matter what the culture, what the neighborhood, what the economic status, and you could switch them around, and they'd be the same person. I think it's because most people don't really have a human idea, a specific life that they attach to who their mother was. Their mother was there for them, so it either gets deified, or the opposite.
Alfre WoodardAnd I communed with many different faiths and even when I wanted to be rebellious I never did not believe in Him. I never believed the people who said God was destructive or punishing.
Alfre WoodardI think people need to understand that with plays and with cinema, when you hear about it, call and get a ticket then or go and see it then. It's especially with the play, which I can do because it's a limited run.
Alfre WoodardThe ones I love most are the people who the flaws show. I like doing characters that we see the total person. If people get afraid to show the flaws because they think, "Oh, then nobody will like them," then you end up with a lot of products, and everybody wants to be frigging heroic all the time - not what people are trapped in every day, like your skirt being in your panties after you walk out of the bathroom. Being human. Sometimes when people are drawn to your work, they're drawn because they recognize themselves or their loved ones or their neighbor in it.
Alfre Woodard