Baron Vaughn Quotes

One of the things I have an allergic reaction to playing, especially as a black actor, is the mandatory kind of best friend/cop/detective type. You will never see me in that movie.

In Australia, there just weren't strong roles for actors of colour. I was often being asked to turn up for commercials with a ghetto blaster on my shoulder. I thought, 'Are we in the '60s?'

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.

If you want someone who is sort of still, has a bit of an edge, is older, you get Morgan Freeman. If you want someone who can carry a gun and still play a father, you get Danny Glover. My category is 'that guy who happens to be black.'

The way Hollywood and TV is, black people don't have any choice but to see ourselves in white-dominated television shows and stories and movies.

A lot of the shows I have done, I'm often the only black guy and I have often had to play second or third fiddle. It isn't necessarily a bad thing if it is a strong ensemble cast. But I feel people have overlooked my abilities.

Being the person I am, you know, the size I am, being a woman, being a black woman, there's not a lot of roles for us.

I think that show will go down in history... people will scratch their heads and say 'How did this ever get on the air?' I mean, they finally have a planet that's populated with a black race and then they present them as savage warriors, and the men want the white girl!

I'm fighting the label of 'Black' actress simply because it's very limiting in people's eyes, especially people who are making movies.

What does it mean to be too black for Hollywood? It's self-explanatory. Hollywood has certain kinds of blacks that they like.

This practice of skinny actresses donning fat suits is essentially the new and acceptable blackface in Hollywood.

Not only our political system is broken, but how we do business and have public discourse with one another. The system in Hollywood, specifically, is not depicting people of color; we're not even talking about Asian Americans or Latino Americans; we're not even getting into that question.

I know a lot of brown actors who play terrorists because they're physically intimidating. For me, it was like, 'O.K., you'll be the nerd.' So I've played the nerd. I've played food-delivery guys. But I always tried to find something in the characters so that they weren't just defined by what they looked like.

I'm black and white, so either, sometimes, you're not considered by the breakdown of the script: you're not 'black enough' for this role. Or you're not 'white enough' for this role. Or, like, looking up to people, who do I identify with? And not seeing Barbies that maybe look like me.

Early on, I played a Chinese delivery person, and even that, which was very innocuous, felt like I was somehow betraying myself. I felt very self-conscious on set doing that role, with a crew that was almost entirely white.

If you're going to make black movies only about black people, that's as bad as white movies only about white people.

Hollywood's racist.

I'm black, yeah, but I'm just an actor, so everything I do doesn't have to be color-specific or specific to history. But I got to a point where a lot of people wanted to offer me period pieces, like that's the only thing I could do.

The truth of the matter is, I am a black woman, and I am an actor. I don't try to get caught up in being a black actor; I'm just an actor who is a black woman. It's not about forgetting that you're black, but you don't need to be hammered over the head, either; it just is what it is.

I do think that being a BAME actor does make it difficult to avoid stereotypes.

Being a Filipino actor in Hollywood, the most frustrating part of landing roles in Hollywood is definitely the limited roles available and the lack of diversity.

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

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

Hollywood had a history of whitewashing and not representing.

Of course I worry about whitewashing, and I feel very strongly that whitewashing was, is, and continues to be a problem in entertainment.