The industry looks for white actors and actresses, but it's not the same for black actors. We have to really put the work in.
— Chadwick Boseman
When I got out of school, I didn't really understand the differences in the different aspects of the business. For example, doing a play - where does that take you versus, you know, concentrating on independent films? You might have one thing in your head, but the things you're doing don't really lead down the right road, necessarily.
Baseball players need strength but also the ability to make fast-paced, explosive movements, so their training is all about strengthening the tendons around the bone and the joint so you don't tear the muscles from the bones.
I can definitely dance, but pedestrian dancing.
I'm not really interested in being a superhero. That's not a box I've been trying to check off.
I said yes too much. I said yes to certain projects that weren't for me. It was somebody else's vision and somebody else's dream and somebody else's artistic endeavor, but it didn't necessarily fit in my grand scheme.
I might have had too many friends in my twenties.
I'm not one of those guys who walks around with a flip phone who doesn't want to be connected. There are times when I'm tech-friendly, and there are times when I personally do want to shut everything off because I'm more creative when I shut off.
I don't have a smart house. My house is very dumb.
I can't even imagine something being more fun than playing James Brown onstage.
One of the first things I was taught as an actor was, 'Don't judge the character.'
For me, being a complete artist means not necessarily just being in front of the camera, but being behind the camera or being the originator or creator of something.
When you play characters, you shouldn't just be putting on their characteristics - you should be finding it inside yourself.
I'm from Anderson, S.C., but I grew up in the South. So I know what it is to ride to school and have Confederate flags flying from trucks in front of me and behind me, to see a parking lot full of people with Confederate flags and know what that means. I've been stopped by police for no reason.
I thought I would draw or paint or be an architect. I was always drawing portraits. My mom put me in art classes in the summer.
I don't read reviews, but I do get feedback from my peers and people I know, like other actors and directors and producers.
I remember my first agent telling me - because they found me as an actor, but I was probably more interested in writing and maybe directing - they were like, 'Well, you can't do both things.' And I was like, 'I'm gonna show you.'
You're not free unless you can show the good and the bad, all sides of them. So to me, when I play a character, it's important that I can show every aspect of them.
I got scars from every film I've done, every TV show.
People don't want to experience change; they just want to wake up, and it's different.
There are some stories I want to tell that I think it'd be cool to see an African-American dude do.
As soon as I came to L.A., things immediately shifted for me. I was now actually here with the people who were making the decisions; I wasn't out in New York sending in tapes to L.A.
I think the most stressful time of my life was when I was in New York, and I didn't have money to pay my rent.
It was a big thing for me to read black writers. 'Fences,' by August Wilson. James Baldwin's 'Amen Corner.' 'The Fire Next Time.' 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X,' of course.
I'm not so keen on letting my car drive itself.
Each movie you do about a real person is like a painting, and you choose certain things in the painting that you want to pull out and you want to show.
When you make movies, it's such an important period of time, when you look back at each one of them. You want to be able to say that you did something that was a challenge and that changed you.
When it comes down to it, I'd rather have an action figure than a Golden Globe.
Even after I became involved in theater and involved in TV and film, I had this sort of idea that Hollywood was off limits. There was something about L.A., the mystique of it and fear of it.
I like ambiguity because you may be the villain in someone else's story and the hero in your own, and I think very often, African-American characters are either one thing or the other. You shouldn't have to be perfectly good or perfectly bad. You don't even have to be magical.
I wasn't a comic book geek as a kid. I read some, but it was just like, 'Oh, I have this comic book here.' It wasn't like I was collecting them.
I was raised in a sort of village. I have a huge family, and I think there is strength in that. It helped me to deal with some of the complications of living in the South because I always felt like I belonged, no matter what.
I would go through these cycles of being really, really focused on work, and not being around anyone, to being around everyone. And that could be distracting. It was nothing or everything.
A superhero movie is only as great as its villains.
I studied at Howard. I studied at Oxford.
I have my own personal masticating juicer at home. I sort of picked it up from friends a few years ago, and it just gives me more energy. Mostly green juice. Spinach, celery, kale, green apples, lemon, sometimes ginger - you know, like, nasty, euuugghhhh!
There's the phrase of 'making America great again,' but how did we make America great? Who did it? It was Thurgood Marshall who did it. It was Thurgood Marshall who made America live up to its constitution, to its dream. He pushed the envelope to make sure that we were equal.
Nobody has to give me permission to write.
The projects that I end up doing, that I want to be involved with in any way, have always been projects that will be impactful, for the most part, to my people - to black people.
Once you start getting big roles as an actor, everything pays. So what are you making decisions on? It's about the director or the script or whatever. But before you reach that point, you're taking jobs with, say, a theater company, in spite of the fact that it's not paying your bills.
I'm not afraid to work.
When they call you and say, 'So you want to play 'Black Panther?'' if you know what 'Black Panther' is, there's no way in the world you're going to say no because there's a lot of opportunity for magic to happen.
I'd taken, like, maybe some African dance classes a couple of times, but I wasn't a musical theater person at all.
They should probably have a James Brown aerobic tape. You would lose a lot of weight.
We live in a world where people can ridicule you at the push of the button. They can question you at the push of a button.
I watched movies, obviously, just like anybody else, but there was nothing to make me think, 'I'm going to go to L.A. and become a movie star,' or anything like that.
Actors can have a fair amount of hate for each other, so when another actor says, 'You did your thing,' or 'That was inspiring,' you can't really ask for more than that.
I would love to have an ocean of love right now. That said, the number-one rule of acting is, 'Do not seek approval from the audience.' People don't realize that. You can't do stuff to get applause. You have to live in the truth.
I try to look at every role the same way, regardless of whether the character is real or the character is a fantasy. I always start from myself, because you have to know yourself first.
There's nothing more stressful than your stomach growling. But interestingly enough, some of my best writing came when I was poor and hungry - living off water and oatmeal, mind clear.
