Pam Grier Quotes

Sex, action, special effects, and violence sell.

Oh, there's going to be debate because you're dealing with the Bible and religion is supposed to be separate from state and that to me is already a conflict before it even hits the gay issue.

Each time you do a film you gain a lot of experience and build a visual resume where people get to know who you are.

Some day I want to play a grandmother. And a foxy one at that!

My grandfather was the first feminist in my life. He taught me if a woman can do something, a man will respect her.

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

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

I wanted to be in film. I wanted to be a film student, possibly be a director or cinematographer, not an actor. That was my goal. I didn't believe I had the physical beauty that I'd seen projected and advertised in movies, in theater. It just wasn't for me.

I love working with a lot of different films and a lot of different people.

Well, thank you and that's for them, but for me, I want to look back at a body of work where when you do the research and you explore the psyche of a character, where she's been, where she is and where she's going.

Everyone else can do violence. You know, Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, they can all do shoot-'em-ups. Arnold Schwarzenegger can kill 10 people in one minute, and they don't call it "white exploitation." They win awards and get into all the magazines. But if black people do it, suddenly it's different than if a white person does it. People respond differently because people come from different places.

Women are allowed more freedoms and we're fighting for more freedoms, we're experiencing more freedoms won.

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

I don't think I can break down any doors, but I'm thinking, "Maybe I can be a cameraman, because I love the cameras." And the cameraman would show me how to thread the film, how to repair it, the lenses. That's when you become, like, goony goo-goo about it. You breathe and eat camera, and all of a sudden, you don't want anything else in the world. You finally know, "This is my calling." When you're passionate about something, it doesn't become work. It's art and it's fun. It's arduous, it's sweaty.

Me, sexy? I'm just plain ol' beans and rice.

Thats what I crave that diversity.

Our culture is revered and it inspires people all around the globe.

Coming from the '50s, things were very violent. We were still being lynched. If I drove down through the South with my mother, I might not make it through one state without being bullied or harassed. I feel like unless you've been black for a week, you don't know.

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.

My family was very, very receptive to all; all races, religions.

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

I really hate to see abusive behavior being passed on from generation to generation to generation, when we have access to health and counseling.

I tell actresses, "If you're too tall, if you're too fat, you're not going to work. I don't care how talented you are." It's a business, and sex sells.

I was able to be distant by portraying another person, another character, if you will, and I found myself not stuttering and not having anxiety attacks when I was portraying another soul, another being, and I found comfort in that. I think many actors do, playing someone other than themselves.

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.

The African-American community is not monolithic. It's liberal and conservative.

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 felt beauty was a magnet for abuse, and I had suffered greatly for it.