Marcus Samuelsson Quotes

There were no small brown kids as the centre of the children's fiction I grew up with.

Jewish, black, Filipino, whatever the specificity is, it's specificity that makes a good story. And I think people are tired of seeing the same old shtick on network television. It's just a group of white people hanging out talking about their jobs. Who cares? We've seen that.

I want to see more Asian. I want to see more Latin. I want more Indian. There's more than Mindy Kaling out there, guys! There's more than Bai Ling.

Growing up, I didn't see anybody with my skin color or my background. I didn't know it was possible to have a Middle Eastern actor in a lead role.

It's people who look like me, just seeing representation of everyone. I didn't get that when I was young. I only saw one black girl that was on a Disney show, that was known for being the sassy, coocoo, that type of girl.

Hollywood had a history of whitewashing and not representing.

It's far too rare an experience for Asian American girls to see themselves in media.

I want to see as many black professionals as possible.

No matter what happens, we couldn't let people say Asian-American actors can't act.

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?

I'm very happy to have the heritage that I do, but I'm not wanting to be 'the Latino actor.' I just want to be 'an actor.'

I think all races are represented in America much more than in many other places, but it's also nice to remind people about that ethnic mix. I would like to see more black models and women from different ethnic backgrounds, but I also think that when you are casting, you just choose the most beautiful girl you can find.

It's funny, because I've never thought of myself as a Hispanic actor, like in 'American Gangster,' I'm playing an Italian. I've always been fortunate enough to have been allowed to play all these diverse roles.

The roles for South Asians may have increased by a decent number but there has been a negligible change in the quality of these roles. We still have to fight stereotypes. Fortunately, I've had the priviledge of working with people who look beyond the color of your skin.

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.

I don't think there's enough breadth to the stories told about African-Americans.

I think the rise of Asian models is an absolutely beautiful thing.

'Hollywood maids' are so idiotic. They grin at everything. I told Norman Lear I didn't want to play a maid because of that 'hee-hee/grin-grin' attitude, and he said, 'Who said I wanted that?' He told me he wanted two strong women that are the black and white of the same coin. I said, 'Oh, well - in that case, I'll be right there!'

I think it was hard for people to cast me as an ethnic, as an Asian American woman.

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

I think American audiences are open to people with accents and different nationalities being on the screen.

I don't play too much into the color game, because I don't want to be the best African American quarterback, I want to be the best quarterback.

The lack of diversity, specifically in genre films and the superheroes our kids grow up watching and emulating, they can't really identify with. When you see the same thing, over and over again, and it seems not to speak of you and your heritage and your culture, it leaves you out of this world a little bit.

I wouldn't mind, if Peter Parker had originally been black, a Latino, an Indian, or anything else, that he stay that way. But we originally made him white. I don't see any reason to change that.

When I was growing up, I felt like I had to qualify it and say I'm British-Pakistani. But now I kind of feel like, in this day in age, this is what British looks like. It looks like me; it looks like Idris Elba, and hopefully through Nasir Khan, people will see that that's what an American can look like as well.