Top 91 Ejiofor Quotes

#1. I think that all the talented filmmakers sort of share, I think, a sense of allowing magic to happen; of creating a stable and secure environment for performers to feel they can push to the end of their ability.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #3661
#2. I can run a good few miles. I box a little.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #13328
#3. I was able to go on stage and work until it felt right or felt good. It meant that I very quickly realised that it was the job for me.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #95143
#4. I think when I was doing 'Amistad,' I was just too young to really understand what the process was, and beyond that, I hadn't really got involved. It was just somehow - and I thought that the artistry was all in the theater.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #98514
#5. As an actor, you express certain things because they need to be expressed, and then you don't really feel a need to do it again. I want to feel something else, you know?

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #153287
#6. David Mamet was great to work with. He was everything that I thought he would be as a director. He's incredibly articulate, an easy collaborator. Extraordinarily knowledgeable about film and writing.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #178877
#7. I was attracted to 'Half of a Yellow Sun' because of the story.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #185198
#8. I feel that audiences are very sophisticated, and part of my challenge is to keep them engaged because they are so complex.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #195830
#9. I believe people instinctively know that about writing, yet people get confused about that when it comes to acting.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #208005
#10. I think, as a younger actor, you are more open to the experience. And to an extent, you want to go into things blind and energised as if you were 15. Keep that terror.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #258227
#11. From deep in the slave hut is somebody calling over 150 years to all of our experiences and all of our ideas on human respect, and all of our ideas on dignity. And I felt like that's just incredibly powerful.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #269290
#12. I've always liked the idea of being a father. And I've always romanticised it, because I lost my father when I was young. In a way, all of the complications that come with my career are about that.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #289464
#13. I'd never really considered film. If I'd thought about film more growing up, I probably would have changed my name. I had no concept of my name in lights.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #311357
#14. Working in this industry, I do feel that science and creativity turned out to be a very useful combination for me.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #321361
#15. I was always lucky that I've always had a gig, I'm fortunate in that way.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #345122
#16. Depending on what your interest in theater is, I always recommend working on plays. It's a great way to be introduced to the field, and also a great way to be seen by agents and representation. I'm also a great advocate for studying acting at a drama school or a college.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #366152
#17. All roads lead home in the end. You've got to keep that in mind always - in your work and in your life.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #402172
#18. There are many different ways the public can respond to actors - they can see you on TV and feel they know you and own you, and there can be something quite cornering about that.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #437214
#19. I've always enjoyed doing a huge variety of roles, which I think helps, instead of settling for the things I might be most comfortable with.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #442907
#20. Reporters tend to launch on what seems to be the clearest, most stark aspects of someone's life in terms of an interview.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #457880
#21. I'm constantly discovering things. Like Bobby Bland. Right now I suppose I'm into the Eighties, which turned out to be a great musical period.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #459167
#22. I didn't know anything about '12 Years a Slave.' Not the book, not Solomon Northup, which I was quite shocked by, once I'd read it, that it wasn't a seminal text. I think it deserves to be.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #476152
#23. London and L.A. are both places I feel I can call home. It's a nice balance of Californian calm and that slightly more engaged, electric London vibe that I've always loved.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #480158
#24. I became an actor by doing school plays and youth theaters, and then National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. And then I did study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. For me that was a good way to enter the field, to work in the theater.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #495357
#25. The inherited tradition is that we don't tell stories about slavery from the perspective of the slave. It's told through the president or the lawyer.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #508029
#26. I've just tried to keep my eyes open, tried to read everything you can, and tried to see whether I see myself within it. If I do, then I can get excited about it.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #516642
#27. I started working as an actor, semi-professionally, when I was 16, and got my first professional gig at 19. I guess I've kind of worked pretty consistently since then.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #526603
#28. I had done a couple of auditions for 'Amistad' and didn't feel it was going to go any further - and then the call came about heading to Los Angeles to work with Steven Spielberg. It was surreal: exciting, challenging, overwhelming.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #531912
#29. I don't ever feel like I've had a moment where I am like, "There it is; perfect and holy in all ways."

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #541453
#30. The idea of making a film - a film that I had certainly never seen before - about the slave experience was a huge responsibility. It's a project that requires a wider understanding of the geopolitical nature of the slave trade, of historical and modern-day racism.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #588506
#31. You do as much research as you can for any project.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #614615
#32. I think the crucial thing about being an actor is to be doing it.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #640748
#33. I think fear is a very healthy motivator.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #675294
#34. It's hard to tell the story if you're not involved yourself, emotionally.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #695719
#35. I think Africa will have a crisper impact on Europe, as it has traditionally, and then that will filter into the American cultural psyche, in the way that India has.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #705860
#36. Sometimes television can just jump from one bit of plot to the next, and the words fill in the in-between.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #723428
#37. Steve MCQueen created an entire family to tell one man's tale and I am delighted that so many of this family have also been recognised today. I am hugely grateful to the Academy for this great honour, and, of course, to Solomon Northup for sharing his story through his breathtaking book.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #751900
#38. The Second World War simplified things like race, and people came down on very clear lines.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #782121
#39. I started off doing plays as a theater actor. But I never thought of it in terms of it leading anywhere. I was just trying to be the best actor that I could be in the context of what I was doing.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #792309
#40. I'm in favor of anything that promotes greener solutions.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #833962
#41. I started, obviously, doing theater, and I always thought that I would; in a way, I always thought that I'd be a theater actor. When I was starting out, I didn't really plan on making films, actually.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #838704
#42. I am struck by how, walking down the street, I'm rarely made aware of my race, but that among journalists, race is absolutely massive.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #869753
#43. My music tastes are often 20 years behind.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #893518
#44. I enjoyed being in California for a while. But that's the thing about London: you can't really shake it. I've always had the impression when I was in L.A. for long periods of time that simultaneously my life was happening somewhere else, and I'm missing it.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #916068
#45. I don't tend to offer up a critique unless I have a clearly formulated alternative, because there's nothing worse than people on a set or any kind of artistic life who critique something but who don't have anything to offer.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #965964
#46. There's a catharsis in cutting down trees. But there's absolutely none of that in picking cotton. It's maddening! It's fiddly, and it pricks your fingers, and it's something that's a very hard skill if you have no alacrity for it.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #970245
#47. It's hard to maintain a life when you do a play. You feel you have to pretend to go through a normal day, knowing that in the evening you'll be doing this.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #971263
#48. Since I started acting, I always or often find work takes precedence with me. And that is not necessarily a great rule for life.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1012467
#49. I look at scripts really for whether they can be moving or penetrate some kind of truth. You are constantly chasing that feeling as an actor when every part of a production comes together.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1017697
#50. Normally, if you're lucky, the idea of a film you have in your head is more or less what you get back when you see it after the editing and the whole post-production process.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1069495
#51. I still have to say that I did 'Dirty Pretty Things' 11 years ago. That was a very sudden shift in my life and my relationship to my work, and it didn't feel it was impossible to make a film like that.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1100962
#52. Friends at school were always quite shocked that we holidayed in Nigeria, but it was all pretty middle-class, really.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1112938
#53. If you're looking at people like Patrice Lumumba, you are looking at people who had a very definite plan, and events overran them.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1118318
#54. I think I enjoy working obviously as a lead, but also you know I feel I'm also a character actor as well, so I enjoy approaching various projects in all sort of capacities. Any film I have been able to do I feel very fortunate to have been a part of.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1119513
#55. There's always something ridiculous happening on the set, especially when people get tired because of the long days.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1140833
#56. Different people approach the universe in different ways, but they also approach their own expectations in different ways.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1191745
#57. We take it for granted sometimes that certain parts of our history are told, and we take it for granted that we know all that stuff, and we move forward along on that basis, but there are also massive gaps, and we have to try to address them.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1226005
#58. I'm constantly looking to see whether I look the same as I did earlier, whether I've put on or lost any weight.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1240273
#59. My favorite thing to cook is anything that comes out okay. I'm very fond of certain pastas and sauces that I can just about cook from scratch. So those are what I like to cook, as well as roasted potatoes and chicken. Anything that tastes alright.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1245798
#60. Solomon Northup is one of the most remarkable people I've ever encountered in my life; one of the most amazing stories I have ever been in any kind of contact with. To not tell that story would have been disgraceful, in my opinion.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1261916
#61. Dividing everybody into genders and sexuality and races and religions, and I think it's important to have films out there, to have discussions out there which really try to get to grips with where that kind of thing can lead.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1266512
#62. We always want to live in an environment where there's no artificial block to good work.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1284421
#63. I've often had the fortune to work on projects with a small theme I find very interesting enough to pursue and to be passionate about in the context of the story, then it may turn out there's a universality about my character which still resonates with many people as well.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1364946
#64. I've always been a believer in research. It's great to have an instinctual human reaction to a character, too, of course, but it has to be countered with knowledge and understanding.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1412613
#65. That global poverty would end. That people would be able to eat. It's the worst shame in the world that people go hungry.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1413546
#66. When I worked with Woody Allen, I only got the parts of the script that I was in. I was able to piece together the narrative from that, but I remember being quite excited to watch the movie - the movie that I was in but didn't know what happened in, like, 65 percent of.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1457645
#67. When I first had my eyebrows waxed, I was pretty disturbed.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1469275
#68. In England, there's no acknowledgement the invention of slavery came from Britain.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1485521
#69. I have an evolving relationship with my father, and his memory, especially the older I get. I know that some of the things that interested him are things that interest me.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1487864
#70. The only way to be an actor is to find ways to work as an actor, even if that means doing a one-man show by a river.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1504900
#71. I like to disappear into a role. I equate the success of it with a feeling of being chemically changed. That's the only way I can express it.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1510165
#72. I can watch a film, even a film that I've been in, and think, 'I'm not sure, 100 percent, what I think about it.' I'm not sure what I think about what I've done in it.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1540250
#73. It's a strange thing, but you get this click in your brain; the wonderful feeling that the entirety of a character is suddenly available and accessible to you.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1588550
#74. I've long been a fan of Chiwetel Ejiofor. I think he's a great actor. He's my kind of guy. He does what I aspire to do.

Garret Dillahunt

Ejiofor Quotes #1592370
#75. I was the classic middle child in some ways, the one who could have been a priest in an alternate universe.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1616969
#76. I love the theater community and theater life, and would love to figure out the distinctive differences between Broadway and the West End.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1632197
#77. A lot of people ask me about my father's passing when I was young, which I'm never comfortable with. I invariably move around that subject.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1661951
#78. The truth is, it's a totalitarian dictatorship when you're making films. You are the boss. You can listen to other people, and it can be a benevolent dictatorship, but it's a dictatorship nonetheless. A lot of directors go past their first experience, that's what they've come away with.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1676808
#79. This is going to sound completely absurd, but I do sometimes feel like the enjoyment of an awards ceremony or the pride in the finished article hasn't ever surpassed the joy of doing the work, of making it. The doing it is really the bit I'm there for.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1700048
#80. I wanted to be an actor ever since I got on stage for the first time, aged 13. Before that, I thought I might follow in the medical footsteps of my parents: my father was a doctor, my mother a pharmacist.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1708451
#81. I loved reading when I was young. I was just completely taken by stories. And I remember taking that into English literature at school and taking that into Shakespeare and finding that opened up a whole world of self-expression to me that I didn't have access to previously.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1710642
#82. I wouldn't be the same actor if I couldn't do theater.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1731129
#83. I have always been very fortunate in my working life in terms of the, I say that like I've not been fortunate at all in my private life.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1747348
#84. I would love to be a fly on the wall watching other directors and actors to see what their process is like.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1771934
#85. My father, Arinze Ejiofor , was a musician and a doctor. Nobody's ever asked me about that combination and what growing up in that environment was like.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1787896
#86. I feel that I don't have to wait around for good scripts anymore, that I can get things moving more quickly. I can ring up directors I like and say I'm keen to work with them, which is pretty great.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1814652
#87. The thing about film is it is a very precise form. You know if you have it and you know if you don't have it. There's not really a middle bit where you're like, "I think we kind of have that scene."

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1829667
#88. Ridley creates a very immersive world, so when you walk up to a Ridley Scott film set you're in Ridley Scott's imagination, and it's a really comfortable, cool place to be.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1835074
#89. I enjoy doing everything, comedy and drama. I just look for the characters really and what they offer.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1837546
#90. I fell in love with film. I didn't start out to be a film actor. I wanted to be a theater actor.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1852701
#91. It's a weird thing when you spend your life trying to find these great scripts and great parts. You are reading scripts, you are traveling the world, you are hassling your agent. You are trying to find that script.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Ejiofor Quotes #1864886

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