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.

You win an Oscar, and immediately people ask how you feel. So you don't have time to actually feel anything because you have to generate a response. And then some of the feelings you have are so intimate and visceral, words don't really do them justice.

It's in understanding yourself deeply that you can lend yourself to another person's circumstances and another person's experience.

I was bullied by my siblings and cousins, so make-believe was a way in which I could be in charge. When I was like 10 and my sister was about five, I convinced her that she was going to jail because she used a bad word. The doorbell happened to ring, and I told her it was the police. I made her pack her bags. She was crying, and then I said to her, "I forgive you, and I'm gonna tell the cop to go away." Then, of course, she loved me. It was terrible - she still remembers it. I had a sordid sense of humor.

I used to enjoy doing silly walks on the street with my friends. Like, you know, you're walking, and then you break out in something completely ridiculous, to kind of spook out the person walking by you. I can't really do that anymore.

I come from a loving, supportive family, and my mother taught me that there are more valuable ways to achieve beauty than just through your external features. She was focused on compassion and respect, and those are the things that ended up translating to me as beauty. Beautiful people have many advantages, but so do friendly people.... I think beauty is an expression of love.

It doesn't escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else's.