Struggle and survival, losing and winning, doesn't matter. It's entering the race that counts. You enter, you can win, you can lose .... but it's all about entering the race.

I've never considered myself to be beautiful, and I still don't.

It's the best honor when someone wants to use as their professional title the name of a character that you portrayed.

Yes, you can have art films about the triumph of the human spirit and all of that, but you'll have it done with a big-budget icon with a $20 million salary. You'll have Julia Roberts, you'll have Robert Redford, you'll have Russell Crowe doing those films, because if they're going to cost $90 million, they're going to make that movie for a public that's very large and mainstream. They're not going to make it for three or four million black people.

That's what he was saying, the civil rights movement - judge me for my character, not how black my skin is, not how yellow my skin is, how short I am, how tall or fat or thin; It's by my character.

As I get older, it's a time to enjoy life.

Does a black person make them an African American? No. There are Hispanics that are very, very dark skinned so the word has lost its meaning, it's not a very concise or proper word to use even today and it wasn't then.