Quotes

But I don't think it helps to be thought of as a scene-stealer. That's not comforting for the other actors. They think, 'Well, I don't want to work with him. Go steal from someone else.' So I'm never going into a movie thinking that I want to grab the attention. Quite the opposite: I give that stuff away, because I'm wanting to make the best whole piece. I want to look back at my resume and think, 'That was a great movie,' not, 'Oh, those four movies were shit, but I was good in them.' I want to be a part of great things.

I've been doing this since I was 10 years old, inhabiting different people and playing different roles. Thirty years later, there's still the same sort of excitement I get from it. It's still fun to inhabit different characters and play different things, so it's all in that panoply of acting.

I also believe that you are what you have to defend, and if you're a black man that's always going to be the bar against which you are judged, whether you want to align yourself with those themes or not. You can think of yourself as a colourless person, but nobody else is gonna.

In fifth grade I was Templeton the Rat in a production of 'Charlotte's Web'. I remember I had a friend who worked in a doughnut shop. I'd go in, get a doughnut and sit there with my script, going over the lines and making notes in the margin. I was serious!

(2008 quote) I'm very critical of myself. I've yet to see a great performance from this kid. No, it's not comfortable; I hate watching myself. You don't like when you hear your voice on your voicemail; imagine having to see yourself 30 feet wide and 30 feet big.

[on shooting the movie, The Guard (2011), in Connemara, Ireland] It's like Mars. It's another place. It's vast, it's stark, there's stone walls. People kind of said "well this is my property line". Why? "Well, cause I put a wall there".

[when asked by someone if they should be an actor], I'd say don't do it if you could anything else do that and if you can be dissuaded by me saying that you shouldn't be doing this anyway, if you want to really go after it your chances of making it are very very poor if you're a white male between the ages of twenty to forty you got the best shot and after that it falls off the shelf that being said obviously it can be done and many people have done it and you don't have to be good unfortunately and we see that too but you have to be tenacious and have a never say die attitude and with all the technology that's out now you can make a movie for two grand you can put yourself out there and package yourself in the best light you see