We don't get to pick the genes we want. There's room in this world for beauty to be diverse.

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.

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.

Steve McQueen is a genius. And I think that word is overused, but I think with Steve it's rightly used. He's a genius.

The muscles you flex in theater are muscles that you really need. I must always find a way to get back there. It's irreplaceable.

I loved duping my parents; I liked manipulating them. It was a way for me to stand out. It was fun.

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.