Lexi Underwood Quotes

I am tired of our characters being so incomplete. When do we ever save the day in a film? When does a Latino actor get to be the hero?

Every year, Hollywood is looking for that new, white leading man and new white starlet that audiences fall in love with. But they're not looking for the next Denzel Washington, Will Smith or Sidney Poitier.

When I was a little girl, there was no Variety Latino. When I was a little girl, there was no nothing. There were very few roles for people like myself.

The color and the diversity dies out, and it gets whiter and whiter, and that's in any field. There is also this idea that there can only be one gay person or there can only be one Asian-American woman in the office, and so it also perpetuates itself where we are isolated, especially the more successful we get.

People just can't wrap their heads around two young black women in a major production.

There's so little representation of people who look like me behind the camera that it makes you want to say yes to any opportunity out of desperation. It puts you in a situation where you can't make your best work. Diversity for cheap.

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.

A lot of the time, you see all this ambition from these black actors, and it's just pouring off the screen. Because they don't often get a chance to work, and when they do, they don't usually get a chance to work with other black people.

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

I have a bee in my bonnet as to how few black historical figures one sees on film; incredible stories, stories from which we are living the legacy and which just don't get made.

Women are being welcomed into science fiction, but it's through the back door.

Hollywood isn't ready for an Indian leading man.

I think that if we really want to break it down, that non-black filmmakers have had many, many years and many, many opportunities to tell many, many stories about themselves, and black filmmakers have not had as many years, as many opportunities, as many films to explore the nuances of our reality.

There are no black film composers doing the likes of Star Wars, doing the likes of E.T., doing the likes of Jurassic Park. There are none, nor will there ever be one. That ain't about to happen!

I think the bottom of the totem pole is African-American women, or women of colour. I think they get the least opportunities in Hollywood.

I am Indian, and my home is Kampala. My world is already diverse. But films are financed by those who want to see themselves on screen, and it is a white male world. Still, it does feel like America is waking up. Let's hope it's the start of an avalanche.

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.

There's a belonging problem in Hollywood. Who dictates who belongs? The very body who dictates that looks all one way.

In television and the movie business, the people who are promoted and the people who are mentored always look like the white guys.

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.

I think #OscarsSoWhite is about there not truly being enough people of color represented.

I was doing a lot of networking in the Valley, and I found that it was not a very diverse environment, and most of the conferences and meetup events I went to, there weren't many women or people of color in those rooms.

My experience as a black woman in the industry is simply that often I was the only one in the room. Often I would be the only woman and the only person of color. Sometimes I would be one of several women but the only person of color. Sometimes I would be one of several people of color, but the only woman.

While the documentary community is way ahead of Hollywood, it is still nowhere near where it needs to be. Filmmakers of color rarely get hired by the powerful production companies, and they are not getting supported enough by broadcasters and funders to tell their own stories.

There are so many talented people in the world - black, white, yellow, whatever - and we want to tell stories, too. But oftentimes, we get the one token minority role.