In what I do for a living, trust and confidence are key. Inevitably, you can't make brave choices and do your best work, if you don't have those, because it's such a subjective art form, and you don't have eyes on yourself.

At the end of the day, everyone knows what it is to be loved and to aspire to love someone, to want to be loved, the loss of love, or having their love be opposed, whether it is family, friends or politically.

The wonderful situation that I find myself in now, is that choosing the roles I want is more of a reality for me. As a result, I take it very seriously, because I find this opportunity in film to be a very powerful and influential medium.

One of the things I have an allergic reaction to playing, especially as a black actor, is the mandatory kind of best friend/cop/detective type. You will never see me in that movie.

I truly believe slavery is why, as a by-product, we still have a disproportionate amount of black men incarcerated in the USA. It is an extension of that legacy, and that's not going to start to diminish until black people have a new sense of themselves that isn't tied to slavery and feeling inferior. I think the church can be instrumental in that, in terms of repentance, reconciliation and just being more embracing of each other - not just on Sunday, but in life generally.

Female directors, directors of color are a big thing for me, which are both important voices and potent voices that need to be heard. That's how I want to engage myself as an actor going forward.

Martin Luther King was a voice to the voiceless, and he did that tirelessly, and his faith was the engine to that. But he was just a human being, at the end of the day.