I never went in thinking, "You're an African-American woman, so you're never going to win." I was just in career doing beauty pageants for the experience, and to show my brains and talent and help break stereotypes. It wasn't like, "Oh, I'll become a star. I'm beautiful." I never thought I was pretty. I couldn't even put on eyelashes or makeup. When you come from an environment that's military, and they don't stress that topic of aesthetics or beauty pageants and makeup, there are a lot of things you just don't have that city girls have.

I'm still trying to do films about black women.

I will not be on this planet. I may come back in another form, and you know, I'll come back as a white man.

I like serious films, the moneymaking blockbusters that don't make any kind of sense and John Carpenter films.

I'm a big child at heart. I think it's important to stay that way and not lose the wonder of life.

Me and my sisters were taught that if our eyes worked and our legs worked, we were beautiful. We had so many kids in our family that if we all got in front of the mirror and were ashamed of browns and golds and yellows and whites, and we believed what society told us - that the darker people were less attractive and the lighter ones were prettier - we would have had sibling murders. My family, being half-rural and half-military, just came from a different place.

The first movie that I saw was Godzilla and I loved it.