Clifton Collins Jr. Quotes

I'm a third-culture child. It's an interesting concept. Having an American father, a South American mother, born in England, grew up in Hong Kong, went to school in Europe - it makes me a third-culture child, which means you take on the culture of the place where you live. So I'm very adaptable.

I knew from an early age that people didn't see the different sides of me. I formulated a kind of bi-cultural identity quite early, and I was always very comfortable with it, but I knew people didn't quite see that.

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 had quite a scattered childhood. I was Irish in London, because I had my secondary school education there. I never really fitted anywhere. I didn't feel it was a negative thing, and I was never made to feel different - I just knew I was.

My writing has been shaped by the three countries - Sri Lanka, the Philippines and England - I have lived in.

I'm lucky because I have so many clashing cultural, racial things going on: black, Jewish, Irish, Portuguese, Cherokee. I can float and be part of any community I want.

I'm half-black, half-white, so I basically put it like this: I can fit in anywhere. That's why I write so many stories from so many different perspectives, because I've seen so many.

I went to high schools in four different countries. The gift is that you can constantly reinvent yourself. I still feel that freedom. One day, I'll wear a dress I got in India; the next, Converse sneakers and jeans.

I just feel like a Filipina, a Filipino woman, and it just so happens that when I was growing up, I was very much an Australian, and I think you can be both.

Unfortunately, I think I drifted so much growing up that I don't have a strong sense of identity. I don't feel at home anywhere, and because of that, I think I'm more of a chameleon.

I was born in Canada, and then my dad played pro soccer in England and then also on an island off the coast of Portugal. So we lived there for, like, 10 years. And then we moved to Minnesota. So I feel like I've experienced a lot of different cultures, and I'm still figuring out who I am.

I'm a woman of color, but I have so many different cultures inside of me.

I mean, London has shaped me as a person. My parents are Nigerian so I've had the luxury of blending different cultures together just through my everyday life.

I had the French culture at school and I love this culture but I also had another culture at home - that of Senegal. I think this way of growing up has made me the person I am today - because I had the two cultures.

We are taking our culture and suturing it to America. Like gum on the bottom of a shoe, we are not going to disappear. Unlike other peoples who totally assimilated, we are more interested in co-assimilation.

I'm first generation American, and my parents were both from Nigeria. And so I always say that I'm literally an African American. So my last name is Famuyiwa, it's different. And so that was a part of my experience from people not being able to pronounce it to not sort of having sort of a shared, common history with a lot of the kids that I was growing up with because my parents were from Africa.

I grow up in the States, in Miami, but I was born in Guatemala, and my father's Cuban, and in 'Body of Lies,' I played an Iraqi.

I am more than proud to be European. I love Europe, I love France, but I have an American mentality, and I don't know why. The way I see things, the way I talk, I'm the kind of person who, if I want to say something, I will say it - sometimes in Europe, it's not always what you need to do.

Most of my life I was occupied with American television and American food. My ethnicity was my choice. It still is.

But I don't think of myself as a foreigner or a Frenchman! I just think of myself as a director. Whether I'm French or Australian or whatever, it's really not important.

I'm half Jewish, half Scottish. It's hard for me to buy anything.

I was born in Lebanon and emigrated to the U.S. and went back. I'd been raised in a French school in Beirut. Lebanon is a peculiar place, so bicultural it goes along with you. There is a Western influence, an Eastern influence. Most people are fluctuating between those identities.

My culture comes from everywhere. I'm sick of this notion of nationality, that if you're brought up in the same city or same country you're the same. Even three kids brought up in the same family with the same genes, they are not the same. Just consider a human a human.

II grew up in Australia, but I'm not from there originally. Like, my dad's South American, so I know what that's like to grow up in a culture that's not your own.

I grew up having two different perspectives - one in English, one in Spanish. Two different cultures, very different - but I think that, to me, it's one. I'm just as American as I feel Latin.