Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" You will never, I think, fully conquer the play. Every night, you see this Everest before you. It's that two, three hours and the audience, and you'd better tell the truth. "

Related Quotes:

" I had always known that I couldn't play Dr. King purely out of my own ability as an actor. When you look at him give those speeches, you can tell that he is taken up by something other than himself. He is flowing with an anointing that is directly from God. "

David Oyelowo

Play

My Own

You

" I wasn't one of those kids who grew up watching movies thinking, 'That's what I want to do when I grow up.' I didn't really particularly know I had an aptitude for it. "

" I know that I am not owed the right to make movies. I know God has given me this privileged position, and I have to work dog-hard as an actor to make the films the best they can be. "

" We can't afford to deny our past in a bid to be empowered. But what we can do is contextualize the past. "

" Love is sacrifice. "

" If you look at your companies, and half of your staff are not female, and a decent percentage of them are not people of color, then you are part of the problem because you need people working for you and you need people in positions of leadership who can exercise their bias and who can exercise their perspective. "

" Not every film I do is going to be like 'Selma,' but every film I do can be edifying, can be something that points toward I believe to be true. I'm not one to shy away from darkness in movies as long as there is light. "

" I talk to God every day. He's very real for me. "

David Oyelowo

Talk

Day

" I hear God as an audible voice. "

" You really want to keep ringing the changes - you hope that your work and your choices make people excited about where you're going next and that that might be somewhere unexpected. "

" I believe the path to a long career is to keep the audience guessing. Daniel Day Lewis is my absolute hero from that point of view. I literally will pay to see anything he does because I know it's going to be something different than I have already seen. "

" The kinds of stories I want to be a part of telling are about delving into what it is to be a human being. "

" Getting to do what I think was my fifth BBC drama with Nikki Amuka-Bird - we've done 'Shoot The Messenger,' 'Five Days,' 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency,' 'Born Equal' and now 'Small Island' - was another highlight for me. And filming in Jamaica was great, too. "

David Oyelowo

Great

Small

" Considering that I'm British and I talk the way I do, I love it when a director takes a chance on me. "

" If my history, my indisputable British history, has never been visited, where does that put me? If we are only going to look at things that need a revisit, you are wiping me out of this country's history. That is unacceptable to me. "

David Oyelowo

History

Look

" We start 'The Butler' in June and that's incredibly exciting for me because I get to work with the amazing Forest Whitaker again. It's a phenomenal script and a great, great role - I play his son. Oprah Winfrey is his wife and my mother. My character is a radical civil rights activist. "

David Oyelowo

Great

Work

" I seem to be able to disassociate my insecurities. I know a lot of actors - some of the best actors in the world - can't bear to watch themselves and I have to say I can't relate to that. "

" In my time since moving to the United States, I've found that there is a dearth of great writing for black people. There are stories that depict us in a way that isn't cliched or niche, and that a white person, a Chinese person, an Indian person can watch and relate to. Those are the stories I want to be a part of telling. "

" I try as much as possible not to utter a single line that I don't believe in. "

" I've never, ever taken a role for money purposes or for some bizarre notion of what may be the kind of career move that would open things up for me. If I don't believe in it, I can't do it because I won't be good in it if I don't believe in it. "

David Oyelowo

Kind

Money

" There are a lot of challenges I undeniably have faced as a black person both in the U.K. and in the U.S. that contrived to make me feel lesser than what I am. "

" I truly believe in cinema's potential for cultural impact. I have a clear idea what I want to do - to enrich people's lives. "

" The fact that I was black and desirous to do my work, the other kids would call me a coconut, as if I were somehow attempting to be white. The bullying was real: I'd get punched, spat at, terrible things. "

" For me, I actively look for projects that showcase people of color. "

David Oyelowo

Projects

People

" Hollywood has done some of these films, and some of them are ginormous biblical movies, but you can tell the people making these are not invested in the truth of what those stories are biblically. It shows in the work. "

" Because I was aspirational, I did my work, I was respectful to my teachers, I experienced a lot of bullying from the black kids. My friends were largely white or Asian. "

" I don't have a tailor, but I do love clothes. "

" I consider myself a human being, a Christian, a father, a husband, so many things, before being a black person. "

" I turn down a lot of movies because sometimes they glamorize violence or the darker side of sex or criminality. "

" People in the industry thought it was laughable that I should be going up for things that didn't clearly state what race the part was intended for. "