The best advice that was given to me was that I had to be 10 times smarter, braver and more polite to be equal. So I did.

I walk the streets, take the train, it's real simple. Some actors create their own mythology: 'Oh, I'm so famous I can't go places, because I created this mythology that I'm so famous I can't go places.

Just 'cause you pour syrup on something doesnt make it pancakes

Young guys don't tend to want to portray people who have frailties or are less than macho.

I was Gator in Jungle Fever, and Chris Rock played Pookie, and those showed two very different dynamics of what crackheads were. Mine was more about the family relationships. So when people sat there and got that, they can sit there and say, "Oh, man, that's my friend." Or "That's my brother." Or cousin or somebody. They empathize, or they had something that they could latch onto, in that particular movie, of my story, and go with it.

I don't understand how people live without creating.

Just because people don't trust people doesn't mean [they] don't like them. There are lots of paranoid people in the world. You figure out their personalities and make them work.