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

I consider myself conscious of how we're treated, and sometimes I can be a feminist.

You never know how people are going to respond.

I do a movie once every four years and they call it a comeback.

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

I was a child of the women's movement. Everything I had learned was from my mother and my grandmother, who both had a very pioneering spirit. They had to, because they had to change flat tires and paint the house - because, you know, the men didn't come home from the war or whatever else, so women had to do these things.

Sometimes I'm angry, sometimes I'm not angry.