I try to serve the character all the time; this one took a lot of work and was consuming. It's like climbing up a ladder and sometimes you're afraid to face yourself so you make excuses; you avoid going to the top of the ladder and look in the mirror.

I'm just looking for characters that continue to make me stretch and grow and learn more about the human condition.

Visit to Africa reshaped my point-of-view of colonialism. It reshaped my point-of-view of my own sense of source, and my own place of birth. It made it more organic inside of me, because it placed me in a position where my job was to understand and to become more African.

I do believe there's life other than on our planet.

In every project, I always look for the depth of humanity inside of it. I'm just trying to say if we can help in some way heal the equation with [Afro-Americans] what's going on with us as people.

In my career, I've had people talking about different things many times, but then not get nominated.

There are places where life could exist. And we've already discovered that there's been life on certain planets that we've explored. That may just be algae or whatever, but life on Earth began a certain way, too.