Gavin Hood Quotes

I did not want to be the gay artist, and I talked to my manager all the time, like, I don't want to lead with that. I didn't want people to look at me like that's all I am.

No matter how cutting-edge Hollywood may seem, it is still delayed in how it views people: If producers do not perceive me as an Iranian girl, then I cannot play an Iranian girl. If you aren't perceived as a full black girl, then it makes it more difficult to play a black girl on TV.

Hip-hop is so much about character and caricature that people just see you as a character. Very rarely are you flesh and bone to people.

Being an actor, you are recognized for being somebody else, whereas these books are distilled from me.

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.

I do fairly represent Middle Eastern women.

I can honestly say I've never thought for a second about whether a character reflects poorly on any group. All that matters to me is that the character is true to my belief in who he or she is.

The truth of the matter is, I'm a filmmaker.

When I finally gave up any hope of doing anything representative of the American family, I actually seemed to have tapped into other people's weirdness in that way.

I want the world to get a feel of me, showing them the way I am and the way I get down.

I've always felt a bit of an outsider. It used to worry me that, in terms of TV, I did not look like 'the girlfriend' or 'the daughter'. That pushed me to write my own stuff, as I thought no one else was going to write me a lead in the sitcom.

I would like people to know me for who I am, especially since I think people have a very skewed image of me. I was playing a lot of cute characters, a lot of little girls; I was objectified. And I don't want people to think of me as that because it's not who I am, and because I've seen a lot of hostility towards that image.

I don't want to play everyone's best friend. I don't want to play the role of a girl struggling in the ghetto. It's not that that story isn't important, but I saw patterns, and was like, 'I don't relate to these people.'

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.

In Hollywood, there is one dominant voice. It is a white, male, straight gaze. When I talk about positive portrayals of black people and women, I'm saying complexity. I'm not saying goody-two-shoes, everything's okay. No. The positive view of me is to see me as I am: the 'good,' the 'bad,' the gray. That is a positive portrayal.

Being a young actor in the industry, I had a lot of people who strongly advised me to stay quiet. That was hard to live with. But I've never played a gay role before, and I didn't want to be limited by some strange perception.

The biggest pop star in the world shouldn't be a boring white kid from Canada - the biggest pop star in the world should be a creative black kid from Texas that doesn't know how to come out to his family - that's a way more interesting story, and it gives a new type of kid some hope.

I always thought that when I got into this business that I was going to have to downplay my Asianness and downplay my queerness, which is not an easy thing for me to do.

I really don't want to be a stereotype.

Even with the beauty stories we put out, we saw there was an opportunity to address issues of representation, identity, self-expression. We created the community that we wanted to have at 'Teen Vogue.' We were willing to lose some to have more.

Every single day, I wake up and take a glimpse of where I am now compared to where I was before, and the work that we have all put in to be in this space. I think of that, and being able to express myself through my art and show up and be present - that's activism, advocacy, and artistry in itself.

There's this responsibility you feel to present a certain thing that kind of respectability politics. I think that became the only accepted way of defining black culture. I started to become too aware of 'How does this look?' instead of 'Who are these characters?'

There are stories I wanted to tell, and they are not defined by what I look like.

How many thick black women are there singing whatever I'm singing, surrounded by rappers, but also from the suburbs? I can't really judge someone else for judging me!

It's weird because I see black gay characters on television all the time, but do I relate to them? Not always, because they're set pieces.