I feel that if you can transcend the color of your skin, with your talent, why carry that as a badge or a label?

In my culture, my mother's sisters are also my mother. And my father's sisters are my mother's, too. So I have many mothers. My mom has a fierce love for her children. And she's known to say things like if you die I'll kill you.

As human beings, when we're young, we're not jaded. As we grow older, we begin to take on ideas of our parents, family of origins and that changes us. We become less fluid sometimes. So for me, I look for roles that are uplifting in many ways - no matter what the race or color of the role is. I want to go beyond that and try to share what I think my gift is and that is we all have this gift of choice. We just don't sometimes realize we have that choice.

I have a lot of very, very powerful women in my life. My mother being the first.

I know from teaching, that actors want to act. Even the subtlest actors can do a little too much.

We're living in a time where we want to be entertained but I think part of what people are looking for, that they don't even know they're looking for is to be uplifted in many ways.

I'm impatient sometimes.