Every time I overcome an obstacle, it feels like success. Sometimes the biggest ones are in our head - the saboteurs that tell us we can't.

And my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up lighter-skinned.

I do my best work when I feel conviction to say something through the character I play. Always I want to have integrity and not compromise that.

I think beauty is an expression of love.

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.

Part of being an artist is that you are always concerned you don't have what it takes. It keeps us honest.

You can't eat beauty, it doesn't sustain you. What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion, for yourself and those around you. That kind of beauty inflamed the heart and merchants the soul.