Four months of preparation and about 12 hours of shooting turned into about 30 seconds of screen time.

There'll be moments when I'm out in the prison yard, chatting with the cast and the crew, getting ready to shoot a scene. And then I'll remember if I were actually an inmate, I'd only be out there an hour. The other 23 hours of the day, I'd be in my cell. It's kind of a downer.

I'm hoping that what I am or what I'm not ethnically doesn't limit me in anyone else's eyes. I guarantee you it doesn't in mine.

I want to aspire to something like what Denzel Washington does, which is try to find scripts written for white actors - or Jodie Foster, who reads scripts for male actors.

My encounters with racism are sort of second-hand situations where I might be standing around with a group of white friends and someone makes a comment that they wouldn't make at my family reunion.

A great book provides escapism for me. The artistry and the creativity in a story are better than any drugs.

One of the traps of auditioning is walking into that room feeling as though you're a guest in someone's house, and being really careful not to spill wine on the carpet. What you have to do is walk in there as though you're the host.