When you feel happy, you look beautiful.

I think television is doing a better job than films in terms of representing people, but television is still not diverse.

My mom would leave her job, and there would be throngs of people screaming and banging on our car. I come from a very private family, but I was born into a public family.

Sometime in my second year at Brown [University], I took an acting class. And the lightbulb went off for me. I fell in love with it. I realized that everything I was afraid of about myself, all my fears, could be used in that world.

I was cast in a movie [originally] called Mr. Spreckman's Boat, starring Marcia Gay Harden and Jennifer Connelly. I felt like an "actress." Both of them have won Oscars - maybe that means I might one day.

Why am I beating my hair up? Because I want it to look like something that it isn't? These are questions that I've been pondering my whole life.

Someone asked me recently, "Do you get sick of people asking you about your hair?" And the reason I don't is because I actually feel like you could chronicle my journey of self-acceptance through my journey with my hair. It's a badge of something bigger.