Sushant Singh Rajput Quotes

I'd rather a young black actor read about success as opposed to how tough it was. I get these roles because I can act and that's it. Hopefully that's it.

When I was a kid, my parents never let me use race as an excuse. They'd say, 'When you walk into a room and it's all white, those kids have to work to stand out, not you.'

I am not a product of privilege, I am a product of opportunity

If any one idea can justly be called the American idea, it is that a child's circumstances at birth should not determine the station in life that that child will occupy as an adult.

My father is a taxi driver, and my mother ran a small business. I hadn't even met a barrister before I got my first shot at the legal profession. But back then, I was lucky enough to be given a break - I can't help but wonder if I would be so lucky today.

You really have to prove yourself and prove your worth. I didn't come from family that had been here for generations and had all these connections.

It doesn't matter where you're from. You can be from the hood or the suburbs. You can be poor with no education or a college graduate. No matter your background, you can win.

I was never lined up outside of my bosses office saying 'Give me an opportunity; there's not a woman in primetime'... I was just trying to be so good they couldn't ignore me.

Successful people have a bigger fear of failure than people who've never done anything because if you haven't been successful, then you don't know how it feels to lose it all. You don't have that fear. So why do you think people get stuck in those boxes? It's that fear of going back down.

I wanted to prove to people it doesn't matter if you come from a small little island: that you can make it in this industry.

You can't be perceived as 'the black actress who doesn't get the same kind of roles as the white actress.' You gotta run the same race. You gotta give the same quality of performances. You gotta have the same standard of excellence, even though people know that you're coming to the race in a deficit. That's just what life is about.

Education levels the playing field, allowing everyone to compete.

The way that I opened the door for the young people that come from where I come from and that have a different background, that is what I want to be remembered for.

What has always made our country special is that it doesn't matter where you come from; it matters where you're going. Our job is to make certain the pathways are open to both our boys and our girls.

For me, I didn't really have family that was in entertainment. I didn't really grow up with an uncle that's a TV writer or something, so I didn't even know that it was possible at all. I slowly learned more about it and ended up here. I want people to not be discouraged by the fact that they don't have a legacy in Hollywood that's bringing them in.

There are people a lot smarter, a lot more talented than I am, people who've accomplished things I can only imagine. Often, they started from the most humble of circumstances. That's my message: freedom and opportunity. That's the American Dream.

I stayed in the East for about a year after I graduated. Then, I came out to Los Angeles and started knocking on doors and working my way up. This was the '70s. I had been told how tough it was for a woman trying to make it in Hollywood, but I sort of had blinders on. I just did things anyway.

Great coaches can't win always in life.

I feel like I ask people who have been in the industry for a while a lot of questions.

People wrote me off when I joined the industry, my looks were criticised, my acting was slammed, my films didn't do well. These things changed only slowly, and after a struggle.

We need a world class institution which will create leaders out of the children who have not had a good start in life.

I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to play hockey, especially when there weren't equal opportunities as there are now. But at times, it was challenging.

I look at Puff Daddy as somebody that gave me a chance to prove the whole world wrong. Cause when I used to think about rap, everybody would say, 'Well, you talk too slow,' or, 'You rap too slow,' when in reality, that was my uniqueness.

This is America. Success is not guaranteed.

I definitely think if you're born into the industry, you get easier access, but that's about it. I have never denied that, but after that, only talent and hard work sustains you.