Any actor will tell you, as soon as your ego and your vanity come into the mix, it destroys your work. Completely destroys it.

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.

It's always hard to be private in public, which is what acting is because you have to do thing really emotionally naked.

Sometimes you see how humanity can rise above any kind of cultural ills and hate that a person's capacity to love and communicate and forgive can be bigger than anything else.

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

There's a big difference in doing a play or doing any project that not a lot of people see and then a project that you know everyone will see. There is more pressure, performance anxiety per se. And then when you do and what you love is really put to test.

Cicely Tyson was my inspiration to become an actor.