Leo Varadkar Quotes

I'm very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That's my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it's not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.

What I always emphasize is that I am a representative who happens to be Somali.

I'm unique - a cosmopolitan mix.

I'm proud of being from Hawaii, and I'm proud of being Hawaiian, but I'm more than that, too.

I say I just happen to be gay. It's just like everything else - I've been on the board of The Humane Society, and I'm a vegetarian, but these are just some of the things that define me as a person. They don't define me in general.

Not only do I not want to be stereotyped as this Asian girl who fights - gee, what a wonder - but also I have more to offer than that.

I'm used to always being different, in any context. People always want to know how I grew up, so I just say I grew up Muslim. That's the truth. Two Muslim girls can write me two extremely different letters - and they do. Some are very supportive, and some question what I do.

I don't want to be a race-transcending leader. I want to be deeply understood as a man, as African- American, as a Christian, all that I am.

Being born in Jamaica, race was never an issue. It was always about the type of person I wanted to be, not the colour of my skin.

Sometimes my ethnicity is relevant, other times not. I definitely get the best of both worlds.

All of us are so mixed. My great-grandfather was white.

My dad's family is part British and Austrian, and my mother's family is from Goa, which is in the south of India. I looked different from everyone else, which now is such a blessing. It was harder at the beginning of my career.

I kind of live my life as an example, and I just never felt like I had to be on the cover of a magazine announcing that I was gay; it's just who I am. I just live my life, and I never really thought about it.

I like to consider myself an actor who just happens to be Hispanic.

I'm an actor, full stop. Not an Arab actor. Not an actor of Algerian origin. Just an actor.

It took me a long time to square with the fact that none of my experiences are typical - I'm not a typical American, but I'm also not a typical Muslim.

No one tells every white person in this country how to be. No one tells every Hispanic, or Asian or Jewish person in this country how to be. There is no single definition of whiteness or single definition of blackness.

I don't think Hank Greenberg thought of himself as the first Jewish baseball player - he was a baseball player who happened to be Jewish. I'm an artist who happens to be Latin.

The Italians always know that I'm not Italian.

I have the advantage of many perspectives as someone who has lived in different kinds of communities: as a woman, as someone who previously identified as a lesbian, as someone who is a person of color. I've had a lot of life, so that informs what I do.

We're not monolithic. What is blackness? To me, how do you define that?

I've got the fighting Irish, and Puerto Ricans are some of the best fighters in the world. I'm proud of who I am, but it doesn't define me as a person.

When people put labels on us, it doesn't always enclose everything that we are. So even though I'm proud to be Somali, I'm proud to be American, at the end of the day, I'm still Halima, and I take things from both sides and combine them, and I make my own little category. I'm me!

Yes, I'm a proud Latina woman, but before that - before the color of my skin, my accent, anything - I'm an actress, singer and dancer. I'm something bigger than just my background.

I don't think Latino; I think like me. If that happens to be Latino, then I guess that's me. But it doesn't affect my comedy in any way.