Mahershala Ali Quotes
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I thought, 'I've been doing this for 16 years professionally. I have a window where I want to play leading parts.'
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I love hip hop. It's such an appendage for me. It's something that's always shaped my experience out in the world.
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There's this Method Man album called 'Tical.' It's his first album. I would just listen to that every day, because the album feels like, if it were a film, it would be black and white. It feels like there's a war percolating throughout the album itself. It's dark, and it has a nice forward pace to it.
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I think selfishly, as an actor, we always want to do more.
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When I was growing up, I was told you could be anything you want to be, but I didn't really believe that because you couldn't be president. Like, I knew that; we never had a black president.
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I was supremely fortunate to do several projects that I'm really excited about. So within all that, there's a lot going on this year. I'm excited about 2016.
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To get to play someone who was in some capacity the King of Harlem, that meant something to me. Deep within my bones. I was inspired by the energy that I knew to be a real thing.
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Understand that we are all co-creators of our respective destinies.
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Come on, we would be foolish to say that there's never been African-American leads in some capacity, people of color in some capacity, leading shows or what have you. But it hasn't happened enough and in a manner that is an accurate reflection of the world that we live in.
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At graduate school in 1999, I finally had the chance to examine why I believe what I believe. I realised that I'd had no period in my life where I'd consciously tried to develop my own theology.
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The work that I do with all of my characters is have some sense of where they come from. I kind of create my own story for myself. What's going on with my parents? Are they alive? Or family - do I have children? Do you see those things or not?
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Family are the people that can hurt you the most.
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At that moment in time when we feel like the other, we were not the person embraced, not one of the cool kids, not in the club - when you're that person, it makes you feel smaller, and when they persecute you as a result, that's a difficult position to be in.
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There are instances where you're in a space with someone who has been extraordinarily successful, and they don't necessarily connect with you as another person. You can be a prop for them to deliver their stuff, and you're just another element in the scene.
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I really enjoyed working with Mariah, Alfre Woodward's character, because she's a wonderful actor, and I felt we had a natural chemistry that was reflective of real family members.
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I wanted to get that Division I scholarship and play ball and go to school for free, and I was always about getting to that next step... I was always ahead of myself in some way, shape or form, and trying to envision how to get further along and closer to fulfilling that dream of being free and having creative agency, so to speak.
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When I was growing up, in the '80s and '90s, I just never really saw myself reflected in the things that I had a liking for. It makes a difference.
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When you have these surprise breakout films that do well, that have good performances in them, it puts a lot of pressure on the Academy to recognize those projects, so it's more of a conversation about what is greenlit.
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In terms of pace, I think I just have to revisit my relationship with expectations. That has a little bit to do with comparing ourselves to other people and seeing other people's journey and seeing how they had a certain success at a certain age.
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Basketball wasn't going particularly well, but in my senior year, I did a play and got a wonderful card from a professor that said, 'I don't know what your plans are after school or if acting is a part of it, but you have something special.' Hearing that from someone who I had so much respect for pointed me in that direction.
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As young people, you want to see people who in some way look like you to some degree, because it makes it a little easier for you to aspire to take on the qualities of those people.
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I'm excited about 'Luke Cage' with Michael Colter, who plays Luke Cage. I play the villain, Cottonmouth. It takes place in Harlem. It'll just be amazing for people to get to see an African-American superhero, which there weren't any when I was growing up.
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We live in diverse communities with all sorts of people from all sorts of different backgrounds. The more our entertainment can be a reflection of the world we live in, the better it is for all of us.
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I've been working almost 20 years, and I think I've worked with maybe one black director of photography in that time. Maybe two women directors or DPs. Maybe. And I've done a lot of TV. That's a lot of people I've worked with.