Billy Dee Williams Quotes

If you think about it, I made history. Not only was I the first black British woman to be nominated for an Oscar, I was the first black British person.

I remember getting flowers and champagne for being one of the first black artists on MTV. That was a big deal.

I was aware that I was the first person of all time getting to direct a Wonder Woman film, and that was taken very seriously.

There's room for everyone, and everyone is wanted and needed. Whoopi showed me that. When I first saw 'The Color Purple,' it was so huge. That was the first time I had seen myself, my mother, my aunts, women that I had known my whole life on-screen. It gives us hope, and it gives us confidence.

The ability to be the first African-American painter to paint the first African-American president of the United States is absolutely overwhelming. It doesn't get any better than that.

I'm a believer that we should support various forms of representation because they clearly resonate with unheard groups of people, and for such a huge project like 'Riverdale,' this kind of representation is fundamentally important.

I really feel like the proper representation of women, in TV and film, is really important and vital.

A flag translates into everything, from tacky souvenirs to the names of organizations and the way that flags function.

It's still a political statement to stand on stage as a person of color and be excellent. We still need those images to combat the narrative we're often fed - as someone innately inferior or inexorably linked with lack.

A true flag is not something you can really design. A true flag is torn from the soul of the people. A flag is something that everyone owns, and that's why they work. The Rainbow Flag is like other flags in that sense: it belongs to the people.

Women are so appallingly represented in movies.

Would it be a big step forward for the LGBTQI community if there were same-sex couples on 'Strictly?' Do me a favour. Some things ain't politics, and 'Strictly' is one of them.

'Mulan' is an iconic story for the Asian American community.

I knew that we would have a movie about us one day.

I'm just happy that as an African-American man, that 'Candyman' has once again been given the nod to enter people's consciousness.

There's a time when it was an event for a black person to be on television. Where black households would gather around, 'Oh, you know, Sammy Davis is going to be on 'All in the Family' tonight! Let's go check it out!' It was a big, big thing.

The feedback for 'P.S. I Still Love You' has been pretty amazing. To have written this story about this family with Asian-American characters and be so embraced is really incredible for me as a writer as well as a person of color.

I'm just hoping that as I get older, and as more and more movies get made by female directors, what we start to see is how, in the same way good male directors get a shot at creating interesting male and female characters, women do as well.

Hollywood and film portray who we are as a people and what we value as a culture.

Even being part of a world like 'Black Panther,' that is gonna be something that's deeply commercial, it still is about a narrative of people who are unseen, unheard, and unrepresented, you know?

There are moments in time when the coincidence of art and reality interact to allow us a glimpse into the context of history. The release of the Christopher Nolan film 'Interstellar' a few days after two catastrophes in our space endeavor gives us one of those moments.

You could say I don't want for me be seen primarily as a gay writer. I've never hidden my sexuality. It matters that I'm gay, it matters that I'm white, it matters that I'm male, it matters that I'm American. But basically it's just less and less of a big deal.

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.

I don't think that the big crunch should be seen as a menace, but rather as an opportunity. It's one of these times in -history - and we have plenty of examples from the past - where it's possible to really make a difference. And if art is serious about claiming a central role in today's society and culture, this is the best chance it's had in ages.

If I paint a hammer and sickle people may think it is a representation of Communism, but for me it is only a hammer and sickle. I just want to reproduce the objects for what they are, not for what they mean.