You never know how people are going to respond.

I don't want to be an actress, because I think that they have to be really pretty, and I'm not.

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

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.

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

I like to do all kinds of films.

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.