The most successful people reach the top not because they are free of limitations, but because they act in spite of their limitations

I am the epitome of the underdog. By societies standards I should have been dead a long time ago, and I was nobody's gangster, I wasn't a thug, I wasn't selling drugs on the corner - I was scared of that.

I'm totally comfortable today with the success that Omar and 'The Wire' have brought me - living with that character, being recognized and remembered for that character.

I know nothing of what it is to be a gangster.

My dancing came about as a way to be cool, actually. I knew early on that I was not a street kid. I didn't have the moxie, what it took to run the streets with the dudes that I grew up wanting to emulate. But I had a huge need to be accepted, so I found that I could be the party king. I did drugs really well, and I partied really well.

I don't believe in typecasting. Just because all my characters may come from the other side of the tracks doesn't mean they are all the same. You don't stereotype people and generalize people, everyone's different.

I grew up in East Flatbush in Brooklyn which was an intense neighbourhood filled with different West Indian cultures.