Mahershala Ali Quotes
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Hollywood has to be a better reflection of the world we live in.
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In my humble opinion, the ages 22 to about 27 are the most critical years of your adult life. It's your time to gestate in the cocoon of becoming.
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My father, Phillip Gilmore, was very talented. He was getting seriously into dancing. He was on 'Soul Train' and won $2,500. But the Bay Area was too small for him. I don't think he had the space to do what he needed to do.
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What I think I learned from working on 'Moonlight' is you see what happens when you persecute people. They fold into themselves.
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I have to say goodbye to things in order to take on bigger things that I've always wanted to do.
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I always hope to be a better person tomorrow than today.
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If you're throwing someone off a roof, you're throwing them off the roof. It's there. You don't have to do anything extra with that. The audience is obviously going to react to that because it's such a heightened thing to do. But in the other moments, you really look for ways to craft those, because they're more important, honestly.
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Cultures and races are mixing in a very organic way in the world, and that should be reflected in film and television.
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The real guys that I knew were really cool people, who I played basketball with and traveled with on teams and knew their families and knew that they love their family. They just happen to do something that wasn't all the way legal, but it was a part of their life, and you knew that they hustled.
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There's nothing fun about 30 people standing around watching you, like, pretend to pleasure someone. Nothing enjoyable about it, believe me.
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I don't have a wallet. I carry my driver's license and a couple of credit cards in my phone. That, and a money clip.
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A lot of actors know they want to be actors a little bit earlier on. I didn't even really start studying until I was about 22.
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My manager called me and said, 'Hey, there's a series at Neflix.' I'm like, 'Netflix? Oh, boy.' At that time, it was just a strange thing to hear. It's like going, 'There's a series at Blockbuster.'
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I was going to try to get into the creative writing program at Berkeley; it's just that the acting thing worked out.
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Who is that person that comes around and says, 'You are OK, you are worthy, you are special?' That makes all the difference in the world for many of us. Those are the people we appreciate the most.
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I think Don Cheadle has always done great work.
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I had two jobs coming out of school: I did a play, 'The Great White Hope.' I played the boxer Jack Johnson. And I was the lead in this indie film. Then I moved to Los Angeles because New York was cold and it was really too quiet for me at that time. I was out of school; I was hungry. The auditions were trickling in, and I was antsy and ready to go.
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It's a lot of wonderful things about the Bay area and Oakland that I absolutely love. I wouldn't change being from there by any stretch.
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'Free State of Jones' went beyond that. It got into how the South wasn't as homogenous as we thought it was - or even the North for that matter, where we like to assume everyone wanted to free the slaves and they were all abolitionists. It actually shows how complex these ideologies were on both sides.
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I love Michelle Williams. I think she's extraordinary. I was such a fan of 'Blue Valentine,' and I heard stories about how Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams worked on that. They lived together for a period of time as rehearsal. From nine in the morning to five at night, living in a space together. The work is really awe-inspiring.
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I think it's important for people of colour to have similar opportunities to white people; that's what is most important.
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The things that people won't totally accept come in all shapes and sizes and forms, and I can relate to that in my own youth.
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Before I got into grad school, I used to work as a deck hand on these ferry boats in San Francisco, and they did day tours. It wasn't a bad job. I made decent money. But you were sitting down all day, tying up the boat, wiping it down. For some guys, that's a dream job, but for me it was kind of torture.
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To really be conscious of how long the journey is, be patient, push yourself, persevere, and always be working on your craft while waiting for your break. That's what I'm still working on, having done this for 20 years now.