Joe Morton Quotes
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My father was in the service. His job was to integrate the Armed Forces overseas. So that meant we showed up at military bases in Okinawa or Germany, racially unannounced. That made me, in that particular society if you will, the outsider.
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If you have the skill, then you can move as you age.
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You make up your mind what part you want to read for and why. It's kept me focused - on what's important, what I want, and what I don't.
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I think theater is the strongest place to find what's missing in entertainment. Unfortunately, it pays the least.
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When I started, black people were either victims or they were the perpetrators; they were the boogie men who jumped out of the bushes and did terrible things to you.
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I think it talks about that there needs to be some proactive attack against drugs infiltrating our culture.
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I love doing movies but I loved doing theatre just as much.
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When we were bringing 'Raisin' onto Broadway, our first stop was at Arena in D.C. Several things struck me about being in D.C.: One was the enormous poverty around the capital at that time - it was 1973, '74 - and I was stunned by people literally living in poverty, with holes in their houses and other things.
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Without mentioning any names, there was a film that was being done, and I ran into the producer on the plane. It was a book that I really, really loved, and I said, 'I'd love to be a part of this.' And they made it clear that that was not going to be possible - for no particular reason other than that there was just no part for a black person.
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Because of 'Terminator 2,' you get not pigeonholed but circled as one of those guys who can understand their way through a movie like that and hold it down.
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When I started off many years ago, I made a determination that there were certain roles I didn't want to play.
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Most of my career I purposely spent doing good guys.
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There's nothing better than an educated actor - not only educated in his craft but educated in the world.
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You don't have the opportunity to win an Emmy unless you're given the opportunity to play certain kinds of roles.
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In the case of Papa Pope, certainly he's making his daughter's world and the world of the republic a much better place.
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I suppose I prefer kind of epic dramas like, oh, I don't know... 'Lawrence Of Arabia' or 'Apocalypse Now'; those are the movies that I have a tendency to be most fond of.
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It's funny: We have so many shows and so many channels and so many things to occupy people as entertainment, especially with a show like 'Scandal,' which is clearly a hit, with a lot of heat around it - but every once in a while, people will say, 'What are you doing?' and I'll say 'Scandal,' and they'll have no idea what I'm talking about.
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If we're still talking about the same thing 40 or 50 years later, then that means we're not doing anything about it.
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I don't think you can play a villain with a negative point of view.
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I think the responsibility that any actor has is to bring some truth to the work.
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In the 1980s, there was no category to stick me in. 'He sounds too smart' is what I was hearing. I realized that I had to become a member of the school of what I call 'ugly acting.' Which meant I wanted to do what Dustin Hoffman did very successfully: to play character roles, but lead character roles.
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I always feel like I'm running an hour and a half late.
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Hollywood has successfully produced many films framed by anti-racist or pro-integrationist story lines. I'm going to guess that since 'Gone With The Wind,' Hollywood realized films about racism and segregation pull at the heartstrings of everyone and hopefully serve to purge a sense of guilt.
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I was maybe one of two black kids in the drama department. It was, 'Well, you can't play this role because that guy has a white girlfriend or a white cousin or whatever.'