You don't get the pay-off when you're playing a quiet character, so sometimes you want to just throw out all your work and say, "Okay, let me do something really funny or gimmicky, just so that I can get some attention in this scene."

I can be busy for three years and you may not even know what I'm busy doing because you only see me in a few scenes here or there, but I've been working my tail off because there's just not a lot.

All you really need to do is shift people just a tiny bit for change to happen. It doesn't have to be huge and humongous.

But along with all of that it was, "Oh, isn't he a great storyteller? Oh, it's that why I married him? Isn't he handsome? Oh, what am I going to make for dinner today?" I put all of that as a part of [Roses's from "Fences"] inner everyday monologue so, by the time he tells he that news and all of that I feel that it's there already.

I do believe that there are African Americans who have thick accents. My mom has a thick accent; my relatives have thick accents. But sometimes you have to adjust when you go into the world of film, TV, theatre, in order to make it accessible to people.

Do not live someone else's life and someone else's idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that's inside of you.

I am the mother of a 6-year-old now, so that's changed my entire perspective.