Ramy Youssef Quotes

I've had a fantastic career playing great parts. In many ways, the colour of my skin has been an asset because I've been asked to play certain roles as a result. I don't apologise for playing them anymore than Robert de Niro is sorry for playing American-Italians.

Acting is how I'll be able to change how Latinos are viewed in media and change how little girls see and talk about themselves.

As a kid I didn't see black cowboys on the screen. What that said to me was that there were things I couldn't do or be because of my color. What we see others like us do gives us permission to expand our own horizons.

I'm an actor, full stop. Not an Arab actor. Not an actor of Algerian origin. Just an actor.

I grew up watching television. I'm a television addict. I had all these heroes, but they didn't look like me.

When you're really young, you tend to fall in love with characters. If you start seeing the same type of character everywhere and realize that they don't look like you, or they don't speak like you, you start wanting to change who you are. That's something that I did when I was a young kid.

I feel like we need to make new superheroes, African-American superheroes, that people would accept.

I'm very happy to have the heritage that I do, but I'm not wanting to be 'the Latino actor.' I just want to be 'an actor.'

Not only do I not want to be stereotyped as this Asian girl who fights - gee, what a wonder - but also I have more to offer than that.

I don't see myself only as a Somali character. I think of myself as an actor, and if the job fits me and I like the story, I will go for it.

I'm 100 percent Irish by birth, grew up Italian, and yet I constantly get cast as playing Jewish.

Of course we've been fighting against stereotypes from Day One at East West. That's the reason we formed: to combat that, and to show we are capable of more than just fulfilling the stereotypes - waiter, laundryman, gardener, martial artist, villain.

I remember seeing 'Aladdin' when I was five or six and loving it. I looked at the big screen and said to my mum, 'Whatever this Genie guy does, I want to do.' Mum said I couldn't be a genie, but that Robin Williams, who did the voice-over in the film, was an actor. So I said, 'OK, then, I want to be an actor.'

As a child, I was always drawn to heroic characters. I decided I wanted to act when I realised that Superman and all those gangsters and Indians were just real people in costume.

The girl next door isn't necessarily blonde and blue-eyed anymore. So I don't feel like I need to morph into that all-American thing.

If it weren't for baseball, many kids wouldn't know what a millionaire looked like.

I knew there was something special about the theater for me something beyond the regular reality, something that I could get into and transcend and become something other than myself.

I spent my entire childhood in an environment in which the mighty of the earth had no place outside story books and dreams.

I don't mind doing action or kung fu, but I'm also really happy to do something dramatic. I'd like to show that a Chinese girl doesn't have to do crazy martial arts to get the part.

You can't be what you don't see. I didn't think about being a doctor. I didn't even think about being a clerk in a store, I'd never seen a black clerk in a clothing store.

I'm fighting the label of 'Black' actress simply because it's very limiting in people's eyes, especially people who are making movies.

I remember watching Barbra Streisand and seeing Jennifer Grey in 'Dirty Dancing' - these were people who acted like me and looked like me. Now it's great that everyone on 'Glee' is so unique and people can relate to us and look up to us.

I have minor characters who are Asian-American, and I've been using them throughout my career, but they've never taken center stage, they've never been really powerful, they've never expressed some of the experiences I had growing up in the U.S. Johnny Tam is the first one.

Between the theme parks and the movies, the Disney iconography was probably the first set of archetypes that I was exposed to. Walt was able to expose me as a child to the full array of emotions, including fear and sorrow. Those movies and attractions haunted my dreams and made a deep impression on me as a child.

The lack of diversity, specifically in genre films and the superheroes our kids grow up watching and emulating, they can't really identify with. When you see the same thing, over and over again, and it seems not to speak of you and your heritage and your culture, it leaves you out of this world a little bit.