Regina King Quotes

I'm a working actress able to make choices based on characters rather than what I 'should' do for my career.

Well if somebody's giving me a script, I'll consider it. But it's not something I'm chasing.

It's such a luxury as an actor to think of your career as something you're choosing for yourself, because so much of the time as an actor you're just hoping that exciting projects come your way.

The only thing that we as actors really can control is to be able to say 'yes' or 'no' to the material.

I've been fortunate that I can be selective enough to do acting when it's really furthering what I want to do with my life.

You just try to get the best jobs that you can get. Sometimes I produce my own movies, so that's your own sort of vision. That helps things. I don't know what it is. Probably just circumstance. I've definitely been aware of the fact that I want to do different things.

I will say that I've been lucky enough never to have to do a job I didn't want to do, or a play I wasn't in love with.

It would have shown people that I was prepared to do that kind of work, although I find myself in a position now where I don't really need to and I could pick and choose the kind of characters I'd like to do.

I am in that glorious position where I can redesign and re-package my own work.

After I did Untamed Heart I wanted to do a film that was outrageous. I really wanted to do, you know, a performance. I don't want to allow my image to rule the choices that I make.

I'm not so in a rush to direct just anything because I'm lucky that I can make a living so far as an actor and not have to worry about that as a director. And so I can be a little more choosy in things I direct.

I admit, I do a lot of projects, but it's because I'm in a position now where I'm reading a lot more scripts and plays and things, and I'm really listening to offers and trying to think what I want to do at any given time.

I want to be able to manipulate and control my career from the creative side.

I mean, I would have loved to have kept on being a big television star. If that's the way things would have broke, I would have loved to have done that. I just didn't really want to continue and be someone who took whatever was offered.

When actors get pigeonholed, that's their own doing to a large degree. Because if you do something that people like, obviously they're going to ask you to do it again. It's up to you to say no. If you're that insecure about working, you'll probably do what you're known to do.

I don't want to be in somebody else's movie, and then they make all the money. I've gotten offers to do the movies, but I won't sell myself short and be in somebody else's movie, like 'Boyz N the Hood.' I don't think I woulda done that.

People look at stuff like 'Godzilla' and 'Avengers' and think I only do blockbusters, or however you wanna put it, but in reality, I can make double or triple what I got paid for 'Avengers' by doing other stuff - there are other options, but I don't want to work with this person or that person, and so I don't do it.

Everyone wants to do only those films which they find interesting. That is the way the industry works.

I have been saying 'no' to many projects ever since people accepted Malar from the movie 'Premam.'

Doing less films is sometimes intentional, but sometimes things just don't work out.

I don't want to do material that I don't like. I've always stuck to that policy. If that means being out of work for awhile, that's fine with me.

I don't have much power to make many films, but I do have the power in what roles I choose.

When you're an actor, wealth is about choice.

When you ask me why I do one film a year, it is not my fault. I've chosen what I liked from whatever work came my way.

Sometimes people think of actors as marionettes - everybody else makes the decisions for us - and, you know, really, making this decision [of which roles to take] is the only thing you lay claim to.