Black Actor Quotes

#1. As a black actor, you always have the feeling that there's not as much work out there as for a white counterpart, but is America after all; you have to play ball if you're going to play ball.

Dorian Missick

#2. The pilots I did test for, I was the only black actor testing against white actors for parts that were written white.

J. August Richards

#3. We [black actors] are more respected in Europe, because in Europe, I'm not a black actor - I'm an action star. In America, I'm a black actor.

Fred Williamson

#4. You know what? I never really factor Hollywood into anything. I'm a black actor, so I can't really control what Hollywood thinks. I gotta go do my thing, and my jokes have got to be funny. Whatever I do has got to be great.

Jamie Foxx

#5. It's great to be black in Hollywood. When a black actor does something, it seems new and different just by virtue of the fact that he's black.

Will Smith

#6. 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.

David Oyelowo

#7. I'd rather a young black actor read about success as opposed to how tough it was. I get these roles because I can act and that's it. Hopefully that's it.

Idris Elba

#8. I don't see myself as a 'black actor,' I'm just Shemar Moore the actor. I'm very proud to be black, but I'm just as much black as I am white.

Shemar Moore

#9. The story ends with a crack the actor Hans Conreid made on seeing my two hundred black and white pots. Said Hans, "You're one actor no one will ever be able to say he hasn't got a pot to ... " End quote.

Vincent Price

#10. We salute her for a life of remarkable achievements as an actor, as a diplomat, and most importantly as our beloved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and adored wife for fifty-five years of the late and much missed Charles Alden Black.

Shirley Temple

#11. Handsome guy, Victor, in a brutal, black-Irish way. Like most New York bartenders, he was really an actor, or was it the reverse? ("Novelty")

John Crowley

#12. You don't recognize the actor, because he's not from Hollywood's generic teen male pool; the director hat to go off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway, to the little back stages to find this guy, olive-dusted skin, straight black hair, face that looks like he's never cracked a smile on his life.

Shukyou

#13. The crew are the faces you see every morning and last at night before you go home. I spend more time with those people than I do with my friends and family, so they're forever a part of you and who you become as an actor so I hope I see them again.

Claudia Black

#14. If I had the gift of Jerry Seinfeld, of Bill Cosby, of Lewis Black, these instinctively brilliant comic minds, then you go that route! But you gotta know your limitations. I'm more of an actor, more of a process guy. I did Tom Snyder, just as Danny Aykroyd did on 'SNL.' I did it in the club.

Joe Piscopo

#15. I'll never admit that I'm an actor, because the next horrible follow-up question is always, "Oh, what have I seen you in?"

Michael Ian Black

#16. I read the script, and I knew it was a good part. It was written for a white actor. That's what I'm up against - I have to try to make roles happen for me that aren't written black.

Gregory Hines

#17. The more film I watch, the more John Ford looks like a giant. His politics aren't so good, and you have to learn to accept John Wayne as an actor, but he's a poet in black and white.

Jonathan Lethem

#18. Black or white good parts are hard to come by. A good actor with a good opportunity has a shot; without the opportunity it doesn't matter how good you are.

Denzel Washington

#19. The camera implies meaning where no meaning exists. I had not celebrated that brother and sister. I had mocked them. I had exploited their sorrow. I had tried to make them part of a hopeful message on the state of the Union. To be black is to be the actor. To be white is to be the critic.

Don DeLillo

#20. I hadn't intended to end up there. I meant to be a serious actor with a beard who wore a lot of black and wanted to share his misery with you.

Stephen Colbert

#21. Being an actor myself I realize that all actors believe they are qualified to play any role. If you showed me a script with a black woman character I would tell you that I could do it. That is what we do. We act as if we are someone else.

Richard Masur

#22. I'm kind of in a middle space, being marketed as a biracial actor. Roles are written either stereotypically black, or they're written 'normal,' which is just code for white.

Jesse Williams

#23. Me and Biggie share a storytelling ability
he was an actor on wax, too. His stories were so vivid and torrid, he made you feel them. And we both have the hardness. When I come out on the mic, you know it's me.

Black Rob

#24. If you say "I'm going to be an actor, but I'll get a teaching degree just in case," when things get hard, you'll just be a teacher and that's how you get stuck.

Michael Ian Black

#25. Paul Robeson was an athlete, Rutgers valedictorian, lawyer, writer, actor in movies and plays, great voice - a black male doing it all, back when some people thought he shouldn't. One reason I do all the things I do is to break stereotypes that people can only do certain things.

Dhani Jones

#26. People told me, when I was coming through the ranks, that a mark of a great actor is one who deals with the period of unemployment as well as they deal with the period of employment.

Claudia Black

#27. With theatre, we all agree to suspend our disbelief about so many things, but not about race. It's totally OK to have one actor playing five roles - people are willing to believe that. But they won't believe it if there's a black or an Asian kid who has white parents. What does that say about us?

David Henry Hwang

#28. Whatever expectations I had for myself, none of them have come to pass. I grew up thinking I was going to be an actor, which I am. But I thought I'd be a very serious sort of Shakespearean guy going from town to town having sex with various Juliets all over the country.

Michael Ian Black

#29. As an actor, you can show up on a set and be on a TV show for three or four years, or whatever it is and, by the end of it, you just want to do something else.

Michael Ian Black

#30. The world we live in is made up of polar opposites, black/white, male/female, night/day, and a human being who possesses both masculine and feminine - vulnerability and strength - is intriguing to us, whether they be a singer or actor or dancer, intrigues us, because THAT Is who we really are.

RuPaul