David Oyelowo Quotes
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The only way we are going to get diversity is if the demographics of the decision-makers change... The odd-token bone thrown is not going to do it. Don't pat yourself on the back because you made that black drama; that's not diversity. It's got to be baked into the foundation of where the ideas flow from.
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One of the things the BBC does better than anyone is period drama.
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I hear God as an audible voice.
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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.
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I admire many actors, though I don't think there's anyone whose career I would want to mirror sort of by the beats. What I'm really looking to do is constantly defy expectations. I'm very curious to see if you can actually have a character actor and a movie star's career combined.
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I turn down a lot of movies because sometimes they glamorize violence or the darker side of sex or criminality.
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For me, I actively look for projects that showcase people of color.
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I would make the tea on a Daniel Day-Lewis set just to observe how he crafts roles like he did in 'My Left Foot.' That was the equivalent of seeing Haley's Comet for me. I just couldn't understand how that was possible.
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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.
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What I try to do with my career as an actor is what I've learned in the theater: I am rigorous with myself as to whether I'm telling the truth, and I try to surround myself with filmmakers and content creators who are also interested in the pursuit of the truth.
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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.
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My grandfather was the king of a region in western Nigeria, where I had the privilege to live for seven years while growing up. But what we think of as royalty in the U.K. is very different to royalty in Nigeria: if you were to throw a stone there, you would hit about 30 princes.
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I think until Britain acknowledges just how much of a presence black people had here before the Sixties, then there are certain stories that are not going to be inclusive of what I have to offer.
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I find that male directors are more interested in what the film looks like as opposed to what the film is about emotionally. My job is not to make the film look pretty, and I don't feel drawn to making myself look pretty within the film.
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I love that as a black person I've experienced not being a minority. I think that's helped me to combat the minority mentality people can have here, which can stop them scaling the heights.
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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.
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I love tennis, love it!
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You can't afford for there to be gaps in your pool of knowledge when it comes to a character; otherwise, what ends up onscreen is generalized and unspecific.
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As artists, our primary function is not to be educators - but we are at a time in history, where for us, our history needs to give context for stories that we hope to tell down the road.
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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.
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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.
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For me, I'm always looking for opportunities to work with people who are better than me, who are more experienced than me, people from whom I can learn. And who could I learn more from than someone with an unprecedented movie star career that has spanned over thirty years whose name is Tom Cruise?
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We can't afford to deny our past in a bid to be empowered. But what we can do is contextualize the past.
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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.