Ava DuVernay Quotes

It'd be nice if Asian actors could be perceived as profitable, which is the bottom line. We're perceived as not mattering much fiscally.

The black characters on TV are the sidekicks, or they're insignificant. You could put all the black sidekicks on one show, and it would be the most boring, one-dimensional show ever. Even look at the black women on 'Community' and 'Parks and Recreation' - they are the archetype of the large black women on television. Snide and sassy.

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.

'Black film,' that term allows studios to just marginalize a movie and say, 'We've made our black film. We've made our film with people of color in it,' as opposed to, 'I just feel like people of color should be in every genre.'

When I do a picture and it's 90% black, like 'Bird,' I use 90% black people.

When you're brown and Indian, you get offered a lot of doctor roles.

Hollywood likes to put actors in boxes, and it likes to put Asian actors in really small boxes.

My mom brought me up by herself, so I was a latchkey kid. I would walk myself back from school and spent a lot of time at home alone, watching TV. There weren't a lot of Latinas - or any women of color. And the ones I saw were usually presented as stereotypes or treated like jokes.

Growing up, usually when I saw a black female on television, she was either a broken character or sidekick.

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

I think that there's room to grow, as far as being a person of color in film. I went to the theater the other day, and there's a whole bunch of Valentine's Day movies coming out. And the only ones that you see a lot of us in are us goofing off and clowning around; it's this kind of pseudo-romantic comedy kind of thing.

I think most people write from what they see in their own world, which is maybe why we so often see an African-American woman as the best friend, or the one you bring in when you need some sass. It's like we're put in a box.

Right now, my job is that I'm like an ambulance chaser. I've got to look for movies with white guys falling out of them.

Any anxieties publishers have about putting a child on the front cover of a book who isn't white is very old fashioned.

I sense a kind of fear of writing black or Asian characters from non-ethnic writers, who perhaps feel that they don't know the culture and therefore can't write about it. By and large, if there's an Asian character, I might get a call. But if the character is called 'Philip,' the chances are I won't.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel prize.

Fat noses have no place in the Hindi film industry. But it is not so in the West - otherwise, Anthony Quinn would have never been an actor.

People are tired of mainstream media's limited and confined portrayal of people of color.

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.

Usually, I'll be auditioning for the third lead, and there will be Latina actresses, Indian actresses, African American actresses because it will be like, 'Let's check off this box. We have our lead white girl, and we need an ethnic slot.'

I don't want to go and play a cliched Indian girl.

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.

I got sort of sick of seeing Asians being the blank, bland real estate agent or something. I didn't care. It didn't mean anything to me.

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