I always say that, like a scientist or anyone, you always want to be the problem-solver. You feel like, if you solve the greatest mystery or the greatest problem, then that makes you brilliant. It's the same thing with an actress. You want to be able to really tackle a character and make it a fully-dimensional human being who is complicated, funny and all the things that a person could be.

I have a lot of spiritual books that I read that I really, really love - everything from the Bible to Joseph Campbell, who I love. He wrote The Hero of a Thousand Faces. It's about exploring what is heroic in you. It helps me a lot.

Lloyd Richards is another director who was like that, who was a teacher.

Most actors don't understand acting. I think it's an art form that craft is out the window. I don't think people get it at all, most of the time. Or they get some of it, not all of it. If you get an Academy Award nomination, you think 95 percent of the profession is unemployed at any given time, most people will never even find work as an actor, and the ones who do will probably make $50,000 a year at the most if they're lucky. Some will never do Broadway. Some will never do a major role. And a really, really, really small percentage of them maybe will be nominated for a major award.

Ultimately, it's not your job, as an actress, to satisfy people's expectations or image of who you should be. Even in your life, you are just who you are.

One of the people I've always wanted to emulate in pursuing that dream was Meryl Streep, in terms of the different types of roles she's been able to play and the number of different stories she's been able to tell.

I sort of feel like that's the most revolutionary thing we can do with our narrative for me as Black people is to show that we are just like you.