John Boyega Quotes

I have a bee in my bonnet as to how few black historical figures one sees on film; incredible stories, stories from which we are living the legacy and which just don't get made.

Every year, Hollywood is looking for that new, white leading man and new white starlet that audiences fall in love with. But they're not looking for the next Denzel Washington, Will Smith or Sidney Poitier.

When I was a kid, it wasn't very often that I could go to the movies and see an entire movie carried on the shoulders of someone who looked like me.

When I do a picture and it's 90% black, like 'Bird,' I use 90% black people.

People just can't wrap their heads around two young black women in a major production.

I think #OscarsSoWhite is about there not truly being enough people of color represented.

There were very few British black women on TV or in music when I was a teenager; when you're growing up, you need someone you can identify with. I remember at Christmas being bought a doll that didn't look anything like me, so I threw it away.

The people who can be helping to make movies that have blacks and Latinos and women and all that - that movie doesn't come to you. Because the idea is that there's no place for black movies.

Women that look like me [the black ones] need to see more of themselves in social media, in film, in music.

There were no Latin people on 'Star Trek,' that this was proof that they weren't planning to have us around for the future.

We have African-Americans and black people getting behind the scenes more and more, we get true black images in television and film...because we have black people behind them. They can tell stories from those points of view and bring to life those characters who have yet to be shown. As long as we have people behind the camera just as much as in front of the camera doing the work, then we'll always be good.

I've heard that Black people and Black faces don't sell magazines, but one day you're going to beg me to be on there.

I personally don't enjoy films that bring black people down. I find that a majority of the films that black people are starred in nowadays, are ones focused on gang violence or dancing.

I liked the fact that there were so many different representations of black women and black men in the movie. It wasn't like we all had the same agenda.

I am tired of our characters being so incomplete. When do we ever save the day in a film? When does a Latino actor get to be the hero?

There needs to be more film directors of colour. They bandy about the word 'diversity' a lot, but when I say 'of colour,' I mean Asian, black - I mean people of all colour. We need to have those voices given the opportunity, not told that their films will not be distributed or will not sell well abroad.

I'm not into the Oscar and Emmys as much as I used to be because I'm tired of looking at people who don't look like me.

My husband and I are writers, and I wish I could write faster. There are not a lot of movies made with black actors in mind.

There are no black film composers doing the likes of Star Wars, doing the likes of E.T., doing the likes of Jurassic Park. There are none, nor will there ever be one. That ain't about to happen!

I go to castings and see several black and Asian girls, then I get to the show and look around there's just me and maybe one other coloured face.

London's not a white city. So why should our catwalks be so white?

'Black film,' that term allows studios to just marginalize a movie and say, 'We've made our black film. We've made our film with people of color in it,' as opposed to, 'I just feel like people of color should be in every genre.'

'Do the Right Thing' was my first union film. I looked at the rosters, and for the most part, it was white males. Especially the Teamsters. So we had some conversations.

You can't have too many books featuring people of color, just like you can't have too many books featuring white people.

There's all kinds of depictions of black men. You have the Denzel Washingtons and the Will Smiths; that's wonderful, but that doesn't represent everyone. There's a Russell Crowe... well, you know, there's a black Russell Crowe.