My vocation is I do what I do. I'm an actor; that's what I do.

I've played a lot of bad guys, 'cause that was the only work I could get. People saw my face and went 'oooh'.

If you're playing a real person, then you want to do a certain amount of research, but that's only going to be so useful to you. Each role requires a different kind of approach to get ready.

I actually had the opportunity to stand at the lectern in the Supreme Court and face the justices, which was really a powerful thing for me.

Acting and philanthropy are braided together. I've tried to seek out things that speak not just specifically to the community that created me, but that speak in a way that's universal and all of humanity celebrates.

I certainly believe that being in contact with one's spirit and nurturing one's spirit is as important as nurturing one's body and mind.

I have taken care of my gift, and because I've taken care of my gift, I feel like I've been continually and constantly blessed to get to do wonderful things.

As a man of colour, I've spent my life asking people to see me for who I am. With Obama in the White House, it feels like people have finally caught up to where I've been most of my life.

I carry a lot of feminine energy as well as masculine energy, and that's the hit that people are getting. That vulnerable thing is not what we assume with black males. You get it, and then they cease to become scary. They become human. You cease to have a bogeyman.

If you asked someone who was a Maori about how they felt about how they were treated in Australia or New Zealand, you'll get an answer. They'll have something to tell you. And you might not like what you hear.

I think everyone is very surprised at how 'Matrix' has become the pop culture phenomenon that it is.

I play characters. I don't think I really have a persona per se. I don't play the same guy every time. I show up, you don't know what I'm gonna do. I like it that way. I've intentionally tried to do it that way. I think that's what's interesting.

'Apocalypse Now' was my craziest experience ever. I was 14 years old, and I'd lied about my age to get the role. I haven't had another film top it.

I have a man cave somewhere in California - a totally undisclosed location where manly things occur. There are motorcycles, there are secret doors and passageways. Women are welcome, but they must knock.

I believe in my children. I believe in human beings. I believe in the goodness that is in human beings. I believe in many, many things that I cannot prove. I believe that there's the world of the seen and the world of the unseen.

You know, whatever happens between the two of us that's created when we come together as actors is not something I think we can explain.

I came up around people who took acting seriously, who cared about acting, cared about the theater and, in the '70s, made movies that said something that mattered. I came up with those people, and I was a kid. Their ethos and credo became mine.

My mother is quite a woman. She would push me, and when I got tired of her pushing, I'd say: 'Leave me alone. Don't push so much.'

When I first read 'Boyz,' I cried. It could have been about some kids in Warsaw, Poland. I knew it was good, but I had no idea what it would do to me.

I think any city that does the Olympics takes on the world and has to grow and has to kind of assimilate all sorts of folks.

John Wick is not a guy that asks for help, so when he goes to somebody for help, whoever that is, you know he's a serious cat.

It's always a collective group of people coming together to oppose those things which are fundamentally contrary to our basic humanity.

If you like rock and roll, if you like rhythm and blues, if you like jazz, if you like hip-hop, you might be black-ish.

It's very difficult to set a film in one setting without giving the audience some intensity and some relief.

'The Fugitive Kind,' 'Rope,' 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' - I watched all these as a way of reminding myself that you can do a movie based on a play. You can do a movie that stays in one place for a long stretch.

When I came into my adulthood, I recognized how fortunate I was to be doing what I loved to do.

Philanthropic work reminds you of everyone's common humanity, and that's really the common denominator for everyone.

I don't think Othello is a jealous man - he is a man who has been deceived by another person, just as everybody in the play is deceived by that person... The playwright uses the word 'jealousy' over and over and over again, but I don't think it has anything to do with being jealous.

Doing 'CSI: N.Y.' is not 'CSI.' Doing 'CSI: Miami' is not 'CSI: N.Y.,' it's 'CSI: Miami.' It has a very, very specific tone. It has a very specific look. It has a specific way in which they tell their stories that's different from 'CSI: N.Y.' and 'CSI.'

Shooting a film with seven to eight actors together is complicated sometimes because you have to cover everybody.

I don't ever get to the point where anything is old hat.

I had two times in my life where I wanted to give up everything I worked for, but God gave me a job.

I think I've certainly learned a lot of lessons in humility and continue to work on that part of myself.

You can't be bad when you're working with a kid. They have the instincts that all great actors have.

Acting is a childlike thing. To act well, you have to be childlike in order to free yourself.

Some characters need to be more performance-orientated; some, you have to be still.

Projects don't need to be special for me to sign up, but I do need them to have something that speaks to me in some way.

Things have become considerably better for men of colour since I was born. But I'd say that we'll be really getting somewhere when things get better for women of colour.

Anytime we're talking about Thurgood Marshall, that's a good thing, I think, because it gives us an opportunity to go back, look at the history, and recognize what his contributions were.

I don't necessarily go out and try to do something that's going to be just something that will please the audience. I'm not interested in doing something where I get the most people to come see the movie at the same time and they get the biggest explosion. I'm not interested in that.

The commercial I did for Kia was hilarious and unexpected, so that, I think, is also another way of signaling to the audience that there's more to me than Morpheus.

I think there's going to be many special episodes of 'Blackish.'

I work with my instincts. I don't have a process that I learned in an acting class whereby I break a script down or whereby I do a certain kind of research.

I try to meditate.

The 50s are the age of elegance. That's kind of my intention when I get dressed: casual elegance.

I have a relationship with the southern hemisphere that's a really good one. I love it there.

My company, Cinema Gypsy, produced a podcast, 'Bronzeville,' in conjunction with Larenz Tate and his brothers that we're developing into a television show. It deals with a very tight-knit African-American community in Chicago in 1947 and people who run a numbers wheel.

I'm passionate about all the things I do, really.

I always wanted to play a cowboy. I just didn't get to do it the way I thought I would.

A smart black guy is confronting for most people. But that's on them, not on me.