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" I loved make-believe. I was the child in the cupboard playing with my Barbies. "

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" I can speak of actors that I love. I love Cate Blanchett, Viola Davis, her tenacity. I love Charlize Theron. She's so surprising and so exhilarating, the kinds of projects she takes on. Marion Cotillard as well. "

" I have the opportunity to learn about the fashion world, and I appreciate it as an art form... But I never want it to take over my acting. "

" In the madness, you have to find calm. "

" As actors, you become an expert at starting over. "

" I spent some time back in Mexico at 16 because my parents thought it would be prudent for me to learn Spanish, because I held a Mexican passport. "

" I have a very ostrich mentality. I feel like I have my head in the sand so no one can see me. "

" One of the reasons why I went to the Yale School of Drama is because I felt that I was acting off of instinct, but sometimes that is not reliable. When you're not feeling it, what do you do? So, going to grad school was about getting the tools to just use my instrument to the best of my ability. "

" It's only when you risk failure that you discover things. When you play it safe, you're not expressing the utmost of your human experience. "

" My father used to act in high school. He was in a production of 'Othello;' I don't know who he played, but it wasn't Othello. He would talk about it, though, and read Shakespeare to me. "

" I do my best work when I feel conviction to say something through the character I play. Always I want to have integrity and not compromise that. "

" I never understood who all those people are behind the actors! When you see them on the red carpet on TV, you go, 'Why does that person need such a large entourage?' And then you realize that every single person there has a role to play. "

" I am very emotional about politics in a way that makes it hard for me to articulate things in a rational fashion. "

" I grew up in Nairobi, which is the capital of Kenya, so it's hustle and bustle, and there's always something going on. "

" Human beings have an instinct for freedom. "

" My conscious life has all been in Kenya, and it's my point of reference. But going back to Mexico was very formative. "

" I didn't know any successful actors in Kenya, so I felt like I could get away with going to college to study film more easily than I could with saying, 'I want to be an actor.' That's what I did. "

" The set of '12 Years a Slave' was an extremely joyous one! We all recognized that we were making a powerful, necessary and beautiful film, and we weren't about doing it without that sense of responsibility, and we recognized that we needed each other to tell this story. We also knew we needed to hold each other up as we told the story. "

" As human beings, what makes us able to empathize with people is a connection that is not necessarily understood mentally. "

" What colonialism does is cause an identity crisis about one's own culture. "

" I'm pretty awesome at making salad dressings. "

" I always envisioned working in film and in theater. Theater and film are not, they're not in any way substitutable. What I love about theater is so different from what I love about film, and I enjoy the craft of both. "

" We, as human beings, have the capacity for extreme cruelty. "

" Being a part of '12 Years a Slave' has been one of the most profound experiences of my life. "

" I had moved back to Kenya after undergrad, and I went through this crisis of, 'What is my life going to be about?' "

" There is something about acting that's mysterious and magical because there is only so much I can do to prepare, and then I have to just let go and breathe and believe that it will come through. "

" I hope we can form a community where a woman can speak up about abuse and not suffer another abuse by not being believed and instead being ridiculed. "

" I definitely intend to create my own work in the future so that we don't have to keep saying, We don't have work for black women.' "

" Dreams are the foundation of Hollywood. And dreams are the foundation of America. "

" Whoopi Goldberg looked like me, she had hair like mine, she was dark like me. I'd been starved for images of myself. I'd grown up watching a lot of American TV. There was very little Kenyan material, because we had an autocratic ruler who stifled our creative expression. "

" I got teased and taunted about my night-shaded skin, and my one prayer to God, the miracle worker, was that I would wake up lighter-skinned. The morning would come, and I would be so excited about seeing my new skin that I would refuse to look down at myself until I was in front of a mirror because I wanted to see my fair face first. "