I really want my acting to be definitive a lot of times, but I must feel like in any given moment there is a lot of things going on with Rose. I kept telling Denzel [Washington] throughout filming [Fences] that the house is her joy and her tomb.

I've been in this business 25 years. I've been eking out a living doing Broadway, off-Broadway... I've seen the unemployment line a lot.

There's not one woman in America who does not care about her hair, but we give it way too much value. We deprive ourselves of things, we use it to destroy each other, we'll look at a child and judge a mother and her sense of motherhood by the way the child's hair looks. I am not going to traumatize my child about her hair. I want her to love her hair.

I really wanted to show [in "fences"] a marriage that is working. Not perfect, but working.

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.

It would be great to bust through and make history. But what's more important is the opportunity to continue to get roles that are complicated and wonderful, to be a part of the narrative and to get to do what our counterparts are able to do. It doesn't just stop at holding an award.

When a director can give you a word that allows you to feel less tense about yourself, to make you feel like you indeed are good enough before you even get to the work, you can't ask for anything more than that.