My father, Arinze Ejiofor , was a musician and a doctor. Nobody's ever asked me about that combination and what growing up in that environment was like.

I started working as an actor, semi-professionally, when I was 16, and got my first professional gig at 19. I guess I've kind of worked pretty consistently since then.

David Mamet was great to work with. He was everything that I thought he would be as a director. He's incredibly articulate, an easy collaborator. Extraordinarily knowledgeable about film and writing.

Once you click into a character, to a certain degree, you can do a lot else. You can do other stuff, then come back and click right into the character. It's sort of funny that way, the way the mind works. Once it's there, it's sort of there. For the stage, for example, all through the day, you're not onstage. You're living your life, la-la-la, then the lights go down, then boom! All of a sudden, you're in this thing. There's a kind of reflex muscle trigger that happens, and all of a sudden you're back into the role. It's just getting there in the first place that's tricky.

In England, theres no acknowledgement the invention of slavery came from Britain.

Id never really considered film. If Id thought about film more growing up, I probably would have changed my name. I had no concept of my name in lights.

I like finding things out beforehand, because I'm nervous in disposition, and I worry that if I don't do anything, then I'll turn up and I still won't really have a sense of it, and it might be too late. So I like to get things as organized as I possibly can in my own head, to apply myself to the work before arriving to a late-in-the-day rehearsal, or in extreme cases, the first day on set.