When I was younger, I was almost too afraid to admit that I wanted to be an actor. I didn't know any successful actors in Kenya, so I felt like I could get away with going to college to study film more easily than I could with saying, 'I want to be an actor.' That's what I did.

I went to the Independent Spirit Awards and won.

I have always loved children. I've been fantasizing about motherhood since I was probably 2 ½. I loved to babysit my cousins, and nieces, you know.

I've always had that going on: "I can't," and then I do, so the voice says, "Well, that was an exception!" It's a tug-of-war between two voices: the one who knows she can and the one who's scared she can't.

In the madness, you have to find calm.

Being called gorgeous is not a bad thing! But at the same time, I don’t want to thrive on people’s opinions of me.

I realized that beauty was not a thing that I could acquire or consume, it was something that I just had to be.