Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje Quotes

One of my personal plights in this business is about playing 'The Sassy Black Girl.'

You want to be able to really tackle a character and make it a fully-dimensional human being who is complicated, funny, and all the things that a person could be. If you can achieve that, you feel great. You so rarely get to do that as an actress in general, but as a black actress, it's almost never.

As theater artists, it's a great luxury to have time.

I love live theater. I get my rocks off by doing stand-up, and I am the only actor. But to show up eight times a week and not have that time for myself; to do someone else's lines? When I work for Wendy Wasserstein or Terrence McNally, Neil Simon or even Shakespeare, I do not have the right to change the lines.

As an actor, our very palette is one of imagination. So it is a walk onto an empty space and then imagine the world beyond it is what we do.

It's your job as an actor to fill out the blanks. I love doing that. To fill in the bones.

Now I don't want to feel cornered as an actor, because I've got a wider range than that.

Of course you can find something exciting and dynamic in any character you want to portray.

That's what I love about acting, is playing different roles. I want to work for the character, and not make it work for me.

See, that's the thing: I'm not one of those actors who thinks, 'God, I've got to improvise and make it my own.' No, my first job as an actor is to take what's written and make it work. And then, if they want me to improvise, I'll do that.

Musical theater is great; you get painted up, you get to play princesses and witches, and you sing. The joy alone of that can really carry a lot.

When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn't acting. It's following instructions. Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that.

So what's so enticing about doing a play is that you get to do that thing that got you into acting in the first place... There's a real attraction to being able to play, to just play. And that's something that theater affords you.

I feel like when I'm on stage, when I'm writing songs, singing songs, I'm in the studio, I'm shooting videos, I kind of get to become this character, and I can make that whatever I want to make that.

I don't see myself as a 'black actor,' I'm just Shemar Moore the actor.

Doing acting opened up other creative outlets; it made me feel freer as an artist.

The thing about acting is you don't want to let on how enjoyable it is or then everybody would want to become an actress. But it really is. It's a pleasure to go and exchange your identity.

I was asked once if I ever got tired of playing bimbos, and I answered that I've never played a bimbo. I've always played smart, manipulative women. Marilyn Monroe and Judy Holliday, who were not stupid, could play stupid really well, but I don't do it well.

An actor is like a piece of clay: you just keep moulding me. Even people who work with you every day want to put you in a little box.

Any good production team is going to allow an actor to breathe life into the characters - that's why they hired that woman, that man, whatever the case.

With acting, you have to become someone else. That's the fun part of it for me - to step outside of yourself and become a character. I guess being Jimmy Cliff is a little bit of a character, too.

Actors are such wonderful creatures and such wonderful instruments. It's always different on the page or in my head. I hear it differently. I see it differently. And then, you give it to an actor, and it comes alive in a way that you didn't expect.

In a way, making Martin Ellingham the way he is was a corrective exercise for my acting - to keep a bit still and show a little control. I do like it - it's like having an instrument that you can play and that you can pick up and enjoy playing.

I felt that if I'm serious about acting, I would like people to see me as an actress. It's less of a stretch if I'm singing, unless I'm playing a character who sings.

It's what still excites me most about acting: letting your imagination go places it's never been before. There's nothing better than that.