Mahershala Ali Quotes

The transition from sports into acting was something I got blindsided by. I had a full scholarship to law school. I had a different life planned. I started a business, and I was all ready to go. I suddenly got in a local movie, just to say to my kids one day, "Yeah, your old man was in a movie," and I caught the bug.

I never really considered myself an actor because I never pursued it.

I always think that I would have become an actor if I hadn't been a soccer player.

People look at me, and they don't see what they think is a typical Aboriginal. I always thought I'd be the white person in a black play.

There haven't been enough profound things written about what being black means and what a black character is. Nobody knows.

My acting ability would have sent me back to the post office. It was my singing that got me jobs. Ironically, now, people think of me as an actor and don't know me much as a singer.

By the time I could have played football, I was already into acting and that's what I wanted to do.

You gotta understand, there weren't a whole lot of roles for Hispanics in the Eighties, so comedy was really the way I could really feed myself and eventually feed my family. I was an actor who learned to be a comic, and it's cool to come back and get back into acting - move forward in the direction I started out to do in the beginning.

For some reason, I don't like the term 'model-turned-actress' - which is what I am, essentially.

Most of us, when imagining an All-American, wouldn't picture a man who looked like me. Not even I would.

I just stumbled into acting; my first choice indeed was music and sports.

I realized I'm a very, very white dancer.

I started quite late. I didn't know acting was a job.

For people who don't know or didn't know that I started off as a singer, singing requires a certain level of drama, in itself. Honestly, it really prepared me to do this, and I've been really blessed to be able to transition into the acting world very smoothly.

I've always loved movies but everyone loves movies, so I never conceived of the fact that I could actually be in them. In high school I had some friends in the drama department, but they were just doing plays, and I was like, "Eh, I don't really think that that's me." So I just played sports. Then, a bunch of years later, I'm acting.

I love it when you ask actors, 'What are you Doing now?' and they say 'I'm between roles'. To be living 'life between roles' that's my favorite

I did all the musicals in high school, and I loved it. And then I got to theater school at college, and was like, "No, I'm a serious actor. I want to do Shakespeare. I want to do classical theater." I took myself very seriously.

What made me want to be an actor? Ah, I'm not really sure, to be honest. I was one of those little kids who did it around school, and then I got to university and made lots of bad plays and short films, and then midway through that, it suddenly dawned on me that this might be a satisfying way to earn a living, if that was at all feasible.

I did community theater and kids programs at professional theaters and plays at school and voice lessons for seven years. I stopped because it was so time-consuming. But then I realized that I had access to this world where I could go on auditions. And there wasn't too much of an identity crisis when I started acting professionally because I had been acting longer than I had been writing. It didn't feel new.

I was 16 when I quit gymnastics and decided to start acting. I started booking immediately after. I was very lucky and fortunate, but I also did the hard work. Half of it's hard work and half of it's luck. It's been working out so far. Fingers crossed for the future.

I love to do movies. That's something that I find so much joy in, in being able to travel around and play new characters.

I've always wanted to be an actor. I didn't get into this game to be the best improviser in the world. I didn't choose improv as a stepping stone, it just happened to become one.

I maintain that I have been a Negro three times--a Negro baby, a Negro girl and a Negro woman. Still, if you have received no clear cut impression of what the Negro in America is like, then you are in the same place with me. There is no The Negro here. Our lives are so diversified, internal attitudes so varied, appearances and capabilities so different, that there is no possible classification so catholic that it will cover us all, except My people! My people!

I aspired to be a writer and then I just started getting acting work. I really didn't have a direct goal, I just knew I wanted to be in this industry telling stories and doing this for a job. I thought my path was going to be as a writer, but I'm pretty happy doing it as an actor.

I always loved acting, but it's weird to think what I'd be doing if this hadn't come around. It's kind of a bit of a fluke how I got into it, so I'm grateful.