Jill Scott Quotes

I couldn't be 'Johnny' in front of a camera in acting jobs and behind the camera I like to be 'Michael.' With directing, you can't do it by halves. There's a lot of reflection, and I have found that I, as 'Michael,' thrive on it. It's lovely coming home and feeling that stuff from a day's work as myself.

Acting is a very important thing for me, and I love doing it. But when I'm acting, I spend 14 hours a day and months a time being someone else. When I'm singing, I just get to be me.

My writing was liberated once I abandoned acting.

As long as I can wear a wig I can be any character, and in real life I can be myself.

Acting is not my primary drive in life, although I'd be a very unhealthy person without it.

'Rebel' is not a word I would describe for myself, but I feel like I was a total rebel being an actor. It made me feel like there was something in me, a passion, a love - and that I didn't just squelch it.

Acting is what I do with who I am.

I think the stage is the place where I feel most comfortable and most myself.

With acting, I started as a kid and it was my safe space and the place where I felt the most free to be all of myself. What gets explored in our show is where that instinct starts and where it meets with career, and how that can change your path a bit.

Everything evolves naturally in life. It's not limited to beauty or music. The more experience you get, the more you find out about yourself. Everything becomes more and more an expression of the real you. I can play different characters. Sometimes I feel tomboy or glam or playful. When you perform, you can convey emotions differently, and your look can reflect each of those emotions.

I started to write songs. And I started to like what I was writing. I think it's a new way for me to express things that are closer to myself than when I play a role, because, of course, it's really not me. I'm finding a new way. I don't know what it's going to be. But I know that I will need to give it to people one day.

I feel like I spent so much time trying to understand my identity and my identity as an artist. But when all is said and done, at this age, I feel the most like I felt when I was 11. And all those talents I had when I was 11 and 12 - I'm letting them sort of happen again. I can't speak for men, but for women - we go back to a kind of pre-adolescent state when we were superfree and supercool.

I knew I could live no other way, that the one thing I wanted was to act and do it well.

'Birdman' came from a very beautiful side of me, from a part of honesty and surrender about things.

When I'm singing or on stage, I become complete all of a sudden. I'm whole. I don't think I've really had that in so many other things in my life.

Modeling gave me an opportunity to be someone I'm not each day.

I've always wanted to be a singer and an actor. I will continue to concentrate on both because I love both.

I don't think of myself as Scottish or lesbian when I sit down and write. I am glad I have broken out of that limited audience.

That's the very definition of freedom: to be allowed to develop our own creative potential to the fullest. But it doesn't have to be in the arts, obviously. In my case, I gravitated toward the arts.

I feel, as an artist, I should be able to express who I am and the things I come from, and the places I want to also be.

I use acting to get away from myself and to live in someone else's skin, and I do singing to get inside my own skin. I need them both for my emotional health.

I love acting because it's empowering. It empowers me.

If you have to change something about you to be in a part, I don't think it's easy to do. You should just pick the part where you can just be yourself.

I want a part where I can use my own hair, my own voice, and maybe even be literate.

To be able to pretend to be something that I'm frankly not is very liberating and exciting.