Octavia Spencer Quotes

After Halle Berry does her films and Queen Latifah does her films, it's left to all the black, Latino and Asian actresses to fight over a couple of roles. I opted for some TV. There's just not a ton of work in film.

I would like to see more films being made with people of color behind the camera and in front of the camera, because the more times at bat we have, the better we get.

When you start making a movie, people want to know: Who's the star power? And very early, I realized there's not a lot of 26-year-old black actors who have been given the opportunity to be the lead of a film. It's, like, Michael B. Jordan, and then we're done.

I don't think people realize what it's like for people of color to audition for film and TV.

As black women, we're miles behind our white counterparts in being offered the space to create and craft female characters in major blockbuster films.

I get it - there are very few black female actresses who have been given chances.

When it comes to African Americans and African American actors, Hollywood has always felt that if you can make us laugh, that's fine, but we don't need to see you do a 'Schindler's List,' where there's no jokes or music or comedic through-line.

We need more filmmakers of color telling the story. I'd like to see more filmmakers take their products out independently, put together a good commercial film and distribute it online.

We're always trailing, as far as the amount of roles that are written for us and the films that are being made that have black characters in them. I don't know if that's going to change.

It is not easy to get parts in mainstream films for most people of color. Hollywood and British writers are not writing parts for us, or the directors are not interested in casting us in parts that are color-blind.

I don't actually think I'm treated unfairly or anything. If anything, I sometimes can't understand why I don't see myself and the people I know represented more in films. Unless I'm going to go out and write them myself, I don't feel like I can really complain about it.

Film was something I didn't really think about when I was young, because if you looked like me, you weren't a film star.

I had a meeting a while back with a big group of women - actors and producers and writers - who are all ethnic minorities and we just aired what we thought was happening and why, and someone said that, as a black or mixed race actress, you feel like you're renting space instead of carving out a career. But I'm just going to get on with it.

I can't tell you the number of stories I've told with a female protagonist don't get bought, or they do get bought and get changed drastically. Or, I will literally write into the script different races, and they get cast all-white. I hope that stops and it opens the door for more voices to be heard in movies.

Young Black actresses were not necessarily given the space in Hollywood to fully see ourselves.

I always say it's hard to cast an African-American film sometimes because those kinds of actors just aren't out there.

Asian Americans haven't had as many opportunities as other people to build their careers in Hollywood, just because there hasn't been that much of an interest, especially in Asian American males.

There aren't a lot of roles for sleepy-eyed black dudes.

In Hollywood, there's not a ton of roles for Asian people. So a lot of it is waiting and waiting and waiting.

When I started, there were no Indians on television or films, except for Sir Ben Kingsley. I was an actor in high school, college, and I played leads. And when I graduated, I knew that I couldn't go to Hollywood and audition for shows or films. I could try, but where was the evidence that it was going to happen?

Imagine a film such as Inception with an entire cast of black people - do you think it would be successful? Would people watch it? But no one questions the fact that everyone's white. That's what we have to change.

I'm on the board of the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which is run by Dr. Stacy Smith - she conceived of the inclusion rider. What I love about the inclusion rider is it uses the fact that Hollywood is based on hierarchies, and it knows that these key players have persuasive power.

There's room for Spike Lee's movies; there's room for Tyler Perry's movies. There's room for classics with an all black cast. There's room for all of it as long as we don't try to make any one piece define us as a race.

There has got to be a way for me to have a role on TV or in film that is just as normal as any other white actor. That's what I'm trying to get at.

Being a plus-size actress, it is slim pickings, so anytime any role comes up for a plus-size actress, my agents are all over it, and they were like, 'You have to book this job. It's 'American Horror Story.' It's a big deal.' No pressure, right?