Tracee Ellis Ross Quotes

As human beings, of course, we're all compromised and complex and contradictory and if a screenplay can express those contradictions within a character and if there's room for me to express them, that's a part I'd love to play, so much more than a character who is heroic and one-dimensional.

Ultimately, everyone's life is complex, and it's good to show that.

I am interested in people who swim in the deep end. I want to have conversations about real things with people who have experienced real things. I'm tired of talking about movies and gossiping about friends. Life is crunchy and complicated and all the more delicious.

It's rare that movies can sort of capture the tone of life; movies always feel like they have to be one thing or another.

'm really proud of 'Sad, Sad World' because it manages to state a very complex paradox of an emotion that I experienced when I had children, which is this great happiness and this great intensity, but with that intensity comes a deeper understanding of the world.

We're not one thing, as human beings, so any character that is written uni-dimensional, that's just a shallow character with shallow writing and shallow acting.

My father has a general rule. He says if I haven't done it in real life I shouldn't do it on-screen.

I think difficult characters are very rewarding to do. They often have facets to them and this and that.

I love to start characters in a place where you think you know them. We can make all kinds of assumptions about them and think they have no redeeming qualities, but like everyone, they're complex.

I like to play characters that are convincing, that aren't just straightforward and nice.

I don't like to play characters that are too perfect.

The word 'funny' is a bit like the word 'love' - we don't have enough words to describe the many varieties.

My influences come from real life. I'm not interested in cinema for cinema's sake. I'm interested in life - what one does and how one interacts.

I love the powerful woman who's complicated. There's no push to be one thing or another thing. It's all human. That's what you look for as an actor: characters written and portrayed in the most human way possible.

There's the conventional wisdom, of which I have none, where you get a record deal, you get a publicist, you get a campaign, and you do the tour, but none of that adds up to things like nuance and subtlety and dynamic.

When I was growing up, the top movies dealt with grown-up, complex emotions.

Positive characterizations are complex characterizations. That's all we need to know. They shouldn't be saccharine. They shouldn't feel like medicine.

Life it is not just a series of calculations and a sum total of statistics, it's about experience, it's about participation, it is something more complex and more interesting than what is obvious.

I love flawed characters, male or female, and I only want to talk about flawed characters, really, in what I do.

My life. The life I'm living that's where all my inspiration comes from. Real life experiences.

It's good to be difficult to know. Too many people are too easy to know.

The people I always loved listening to had a little bit of dirt under their fingernails because they had done some living and had these stories to talk about.

People often only see one side to someone's personality, but there are levels.

I love playing characters who are multilayered and multidimensional and have a darkness to them, which makes them more realistic and more fun to play.

I am touched by my readers who loved my books. All the stories are true incidents in life. Now I have realised, any amount of imagination will not be as beautiful as the real life.