David Oyelowo Quotes

I truly think a long career is to keep the audience guessing and not being able to be boxed, and for me, I'm not hell-bent on playing the lead in things as long its an interesting character with phenomenally talented people, and it's a script that I feel is genuinely innovative, creative, and potentially interesting for an audience.

U2's best work has always been when we didn't know what we're doing.

When it comes to storytelling, not taking risks is riskier than swinging for the fences. I have very simple ambitions when it comes to taking risks in storytelling and programming. I try very hard to avoid the expected.

I want to change things with everything I do, not for the sake of changing things, but for the sake of taking greater and greater risks, or how minimalist I might be able to be, or how I can involve elements or ingredients in music videos that are not musical, for instance.

I don't say that I'm going to be like every other comic that's blue, or gratuitous use of language. I do try to have my own standards: I don't do everything the audience wants, and I do try to surprise them.

We have to take risks in British television. It has to stop playing to the lowest common denominator and patronising people.

My greatest desire as an actor is to keep people guessing and not do anything close to what I did last time.

I like taking up challenges. I prefer working with scripts that are different and veer from the tried and tested. So far, it's always worked.

I think if you try to tailor your act to anybody, you end up with an act that doesn't work anyway.

Always changing genres, making very different films is a good idea. It's a way of making yourself feel vulnerable again, getting back to that innocence. As is working within a circumspect budget.

I feel like every artist has an opportunity to create something new and to challenge themselves to reach out to a new crowd.

One of my life philosophies is that you have a choice to make when you're doing something creative. You can be cheesy... or you can be lame.

I'm obsessed with giving the audience something they don't see coming.

I never tell an audience what they can expect. I never have, and I never will.

People are fed up of formula films, and we are getting new space to experiment.

I always look for projects that are risky and ones that want to do something unique. If audiences don't like it, you feel good knowing that you were brave enough to do something original. If they do like it, you feel like everyone is rewarded, because we all got to see something new.

I like to try new stuff and experiment. That's why I think it's entertaining to watch my matches, because you never know what I'm going to do, and you see things that you've never seen before.

I have a lot of maneuvers in my back pocket, so to speak. And to me, the thing is to always surprise the audience so they're always seeing something new, and not just get stuck in the same rut.

I constantly want to do something new and surprise the audience.

I learned with 'The Disaster Artist,' when I was writing the book, the audience will follow you if you really try to do something different. The biggest thing is, you want to be genuine and try to surprise your audience with kind of a new direction.

Being on Netflix lets us be experimental. We can do crazy things.

There is no point in playing safe, because the audiences love different quirks: something that is crazy and out-of-the-box. I think that's what my space is, and if you are going to have your own space in the industry, this is where I want to be.

We try to keep audiences coming back in greater numbers by doing the unexpected and not simply following a pattern or a mold or a formula.

One of my biggest heroes and people I was fortunate enough to be around is David Bowie. I look at his career, and he always had the balls to break things that weren't broken, to step away from something and try something new, at risk of failing.

If movies have to satisfy every possible quadrant before they're even made, they're dull. You only get great things when people overreach themselves.