Viggo Mortensen Quotes

I don't feel I have to defend myself for being English or for being Irish, because, in a way, I don't feel either. And, in another way, of course, I'm both.

I grew up thinking of myself as an American but also, because of my parents and the Iranian culture that was in our home, as an Iranian. So if there's any such thing as dual loyalty, then I have it - at least culturally.

Because I was born in Casablanca and my parents were from the south of Spain, I do not have a big central root in France. I feel French but in a few ways, not at all French.

For Americans I'll always be Israeli, and for Israelis I'll always be American. But I really have no need for definitions.

I am myself of a mixed background.

My heart is half Puerto Rican, half Canadian. That is how I feel.

The question really isn't whether I'm American, Russian, Iranian, Azerbaijani, or anything else. I've been shaped by all these people and cultures and I feel quite comfortable among all of them

I have two passports because I have to have at least one, and I really don't know how I define myself. And I feel that as I get older, I feel very fortunate to have, on paper, a dual nationality.

Being South Asian in the U.K. is like being Latino in the U.S., I would guess. It's a bit more hood. You see things; things happen. I was bouncing between worlds. You're acting from a very early age, when you have to code-switch like that. I'm a hybrid, a mongrel. I think many people live that life.

Deep down inside, I'm really a black girl stuck in a Mexican girl's body. But I'm also in touch with my inner white girl and my inner Asian girl. I feel like a little bit of everybody.

I ended up very American and very Indonesian and a little bit of a lot of things.

My parents sent me to a school across town, an integrated school, where I had the chance to meet and grow up with people who were from other parts of the world. ... I remember feeling that I would never have anything to contribute on St. Patrick's Day. I couldn't tell the stories that they might have been telling about their forebears and I felt left out.

I always felt I wasn't completely American and I wasn't completely British: there was a feeling of having my feet in both places.

I guess I'm kind of a mutt. I was born in the U.S., my parents are from Mexico, and I grew up in Switzerland. It's weird because I sound American, but I spell theater 'theatre' with the 'r' before the 'e'.

I grew up watching foreign programs - American, English, Mexican, and very little Kenyan. 'The Color Purple' was the first time I saw people who looked like me.

In Sweden, I went to an English school, where there was a mishmash of people from all over the world. Some were diplomatic kids with a lot of money, some were ghetto kids who came up from the suburbs, and I grew up in between. There's a community of second generation immigrants, and I became part of that because I had an American father.

When you ask your white friends what their cultural heritage is, they don't just say white. They give you a math equation. 'Well, I'm a third German and a fourth Irish and one-sixteenth Welsh and one-fortieth Native American for college applications.'

I'm half Puerto Rican and half Jewish and so, in some ways, living in many worlds at once is where I feel most at home.

I think of myself as being Jewish and Irish, despite the fact that I'm English.

I remember really bonding with the first generation kids, the Chinese Canadian kids, and in high school bonding with the Latin kids and the East Indian kids. It was very interesting because it made me open to lots of musical sounds.

I have a European frame of mind and Europe is my home.

I made a lot of friends at school, and they were all Africans. I could have felt very different. I didn't feel different, I didn't notice the color of their skin, I didn't notice the color of my skin and I have remembered that all my life.

It's not even about black and white anymore, because so many people are from mixed backgrounds and mixed ethnicities, and it's just a great time to be able to pull all that together.

I think a lot of people have a problem with the fact that I've adopted an African child, a child who has a different color skin than I do.

There's probably been very few people in comedy that have a diversified background as I do.