I had this vivid image of myself at the age of 60 looking back on my life and truly regretting the fact that I hadn't tried to be an actor

I went to an all-boys high school, and they accepted girls in only the two A.P. classes. They had these archaic rules: for example, girls couldn't wear makeup. I found it so outrageous that an all-boys school could tell girls to not wear makeup! So I went on a campaign. I got a petition signed and everything. If a girl wants to wear makeup to boost confidence, why not?

Even in my dreams of being an actor, my dream was not in the celebrity. My dream was in the work that I wanted to do.

European standards of beauty are something that plague the entire world - the idea that darker skin is not beautiful, that light skin is the key to success and love. Africa is no exception.

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.

It's so much more fun to do the work than to talk about it. I will have to admit that. Everybody gets to decide how they feel, and what to take away by themselves, and that's what you hope for. That people will take away different things and have different experiences from the work we do as actors. So I don't like to prescribe how to feel about the work I do.

Growing up in Kenya, slum life was not far away. I had family that lived in slums, so I visited them often, and so I've seen and interacted with abject poverty. But I also know that because of that, poverty is not the definition of the people that live there.