Actor is just a strange profession, it really is, that you could be in front of the same people for years, and all of a sudden one thing happens, and it finally clicks.

We grew up in abject poverty. Acting, writing scripts and skits were a way of escaping our environment at a very young age.

Denzel [Washington] just knows the actor. He knows the process, and you don't often get that.

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.

Just because I was 30 doesn't mean I was grown. God, I was such an idiot. I was an absolute idiot at 30. And I grew up.

Acting, it's the disappearance of self, disappearance of your own needs and your own wants and the kind of embracing of the character that makes it work.

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.