Shoes make an outfit; they're like rims for a car.
— Omari Hardwick
I'm addicted to the hotel life. It's humbling and fly at the same time.
So many athletes who have been close to me have been everything to me.
I was definitely a Daddy's boy.
I would honestly say I'm in the turtle's race. My journey is a marathon.
I did 'Fences' off-broadway at the Beacon Theater, so it's amazing that Denzel Washington and Viola Davis brought it to Broadway.
Women are amazing lovers.
Deciding to not attach ourselves to something that doesn't appropriately represent us is extremely powerful.
I was going from Furman to the University of Georgia. I transferred to play football.
I'm safe where I'm at just being the guy where people go, 'That's a really good actor. What's his name again?' I liked being at that place.
Some of the most amazing people I've met in life are cops.
I always had an interest in telling stories.
I found poetry at 12 and 13 and, lo and behold, learned that my attorney father had a background in poetry - as he wore dashikis and Afros in the '70s and named his kids Arabic names. He was a poet and a lot like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron and all of these folks. He definitely was an artist.
I think Gil Scott-Heron is a king. He's a brilliant, broken king.
I know that Donald Trump is a smart man.
Poetry has, in a way, been my bridge to my acting career.
I've been described as a smart actor because I've attended college. Or I've been called an artsy jock. And I am thinking, 'So, are actors supposed to be dumb?'
Sometimes my schedule doesn't allow time to go to the hotel after I get off the plane, so I bring my Freebird boots or my old school Adidas shell-toes to throw on after I land.
I got in trouble for saying I would move my family to Europe, but I said it.
I was raised looking at women who were strong, and they weren't really into playing race cards or playing gender cards. I didn't grow up around women who were like, 'Well, let the boys do that, and let the girls do that.' I didn't really see that in my house.
We are a total of our sum parts, right? I came from a family of very strong women - black women. And if I go back as far as my great grandmothers, there was always that love and the ability to be nurturing. Then I grew up in a household where my father was the one who was more affectionate with me.
I'm not shutting myself off from kids; I'm remaining open to kids and the energy that they bring.
I come from the stage, so I started in New York, lived there for eleven years.
If you remain open to great directors who look like you, who know what they're doing and are making impactful films that are destroying these 'blockbuster films,' you can do okay, and everybody can get more of a piece of the pie. But you've got to be open and brave.
Women are so necessary for us in terms of support.
Know that the tattoos are all significant. They're all extremely insignificant. I can't break each one down, but it's 20 years. The first one was 21 years of age from a football teammate.
I'm such a carnivorous researcher as an actor - I chew it up like it's meat, and I really don't know how to do that without the people that are producing or creating or writing that which they want me to chew up.
Life as a poet and actor truly became full circle as I stood on stage as host of 'Verses & Flow' and lived in both of these outfits. It was one of the best experiences of my professional life.
When I think about the person who's been most in my ear, it's Joe Dumars.
I'd done 'Peter Pan' in a little pre-K class or whatever.
I use Aveeno cleansers and moisturizers.
For a long time, I had been very secretive about a lot of the things I'd been through personally, and a lot of that is purposeful. My fan base, for the large part, is the younger generation. They're like, 'I want to know everything! I want to know it all!'
When it's all said and done, I am secure enough with my manhood to say to the world, 'I am a male actor, and its okay for me to play a gay man.'
I think, by nature you know, I'm very attracted and I gravitate toward the very strong girl who can watch a ballgame, but who's also extremely feminine.
I always have a backpack. I was a poet, so it reminds me of being a backpack poet.
That's the thing with me being a former athlete: in the way I attack characters and attack poetry is from the base of being an athlete.
I'd say my artistic bent definitely came from my father, who was a trial lawyer. And if you're smart, you know that a trial lawyer isn't that different from an actor. He was a poet as well.
I was trying to pay the bills with poems, and it was easy to memorize my poems, because I'd be riding my bike in California trying to memorize them before going on stage at a poetry lounge.
I worked on the workshop of 'Topdog/Underdog' before it went to Broadway. My minor in school was theater, so I'm based in that, and then I moved to Los Angeles.
A powerful person is equally cool with their flaws and things that aren't powerful about them at all.
You can't look at the dollar and say, 'I'm not what I dreamed of being unless I do this type of movie and it's a blockbuster that gives me this amount of dollars.' That's not good.
I have very much been a guy who's acknowledged how many women have directed me, have produced... it's been unbelievable.
The reality is our story and the way we love and our taste in clothing and everything else. And what we ambitiously feel we can be.
Real to Reel is a rare opportunity for new filmmakers to screen their work for industry insiders.
To make your own family is just the most empowering thing ever. It's the greatest thing you can ever pull off.
I think the universe just brings people around others they find to be interesting.
I don't think you really have chemistry in the way that you want between two actors unless frustration is there as well.
I was at UGA playing with Champ Bailey and Hines Ward - both guys who will probably touch the Hall of Fame one day.
As a poet, I would always hear emcees come up to me and say, 'Yo, you should rap,' and I was like, 'No.' You know, the label was tough for me. I'm a poet. I was proud of that distinction between the two, not wanting to be the other.
Actors are intelligent. Yet, many of them do not communicate well. That's what makes it so hard to have a relationship with one.
