For me, that was a hard scene [in "Fences"] to do twenty-something times, which (laughing), I counted. That was difficult, but once I did it, I felt like I could do anything.

At the end of the day, nobody can tell you how to tackle failure or how to handle change. The world is very good at encouraging you to go along with the status quo and at basking in your successes. But when you hit a wall in your personal life, and you screw up, people don't give you a chance to navigate your way through it and tap into what's extraordinary about you.

I think that what happens so often on screen is high-stake moments tends to look too pretty. And I just don't think it's honest.

I think sometimes what people miss about black people is that we're complicated.

When I go home, I am a slug. I want to do everything completely opposite of what I do on the red carpet. I like to take off all my makeup, put on a t-shirt, be completely unassuming and just do stuff with my husband and my daughter.

And "classically not beautiful" is a fancy term for saying ugly. And denouncing you. And erasing you.

I had to invest in the love and understand that with the love comes the pain. So when he tells me that, the monologue is already there. Does that make sense?