Quotes About Black Actors

#1. I imagine it was much different in the 1970s. That was the Renaissance for black actors, albeit in blaxploitation movies. There was a much greater preponderance of work then than there is now.

Don Cheadle

#2. Are there differences between black actors' opportunities and white actors' opportunities? Yes, there are. It's been said.

Idris Elba

#3. I ruffle a lot of feathers. And I'm also selective - that makes you a troublemaker. But so be it. I laid a cornerstone for black actors, and that makes me happy.

Esther Rolle

#4. We can never know ... But maybe it's because no black actors merited being nominated.Why put people into categories?

Charlotte Rampling

#5. I got out of the Army - in my world - I came to New York, for instance, when the civil rights movement was just beginning, and that created a certain energy, a certain rumble, a certain impetus for black actors.

James Earl Jones

#6. There are loads of black actors.You can't say: I'm going to vote for him, he's not very good but he's black, [so] I'll vote for him. You've got to give a good performance.

Michael Caine

#7. You don't pick black actors or black directors because they are black. You pick them because they are good. If you lend somebody 50 million dollars you want you're money back. You don't care if they are oppressed. You just want you're money back.

Denzel Washington

#8. There are a lot of limitations and stigmas that are placed on young actors, specifically young black actors.

Anthony Mackie

#9. I walked out on American Gangster: this evil piece of dreck. Defenders of this junk say that these movies give Black actors jobs. So did "Birth of a Nation."

Ishmael Reed

#10. A lot of times black actors get stuck in a box. They're up against a lot of limitations for the kind of films that they get approached about. It's easy to get stuck in a box and just be approached about nothing but urban films.

Tyrese Gibson

#11. My husband and I are writers, and I wish I could write faster. There are not a lot of movies made with black actors in mind.

Gina Prince-Bythewood

#12. I like to work and there's no movies for actors, period, especially black actors. When white actors are like, 'Man, there's no work out there,' then black actors are like, 'Are you kidding me?'

Marlon Wayans

#13. Black actors on the road, flying around the country working as poets. Those people are inspirations for millions of kids who write.

Russell Simmons

#14. 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

#15. I am admiring of my fellow peers, black filmmakers and black actors and actresses.

Cuba Gooding Jr.

#16. But George Lucas is carrying about Black actors, about Black men, about Black history, which really incorporates and tells all of history. You can't take one race out without eliminating every other race if you're going to tell the story of the human race.

Terrence Howard

#17. I don't have to sympathize or empathize with a human being in order to be able to portray them. I mean, some of the greatest roles that actors have been able to play haven't been the most endearing on screen.

Dustin Lance Black

#18. You always see actors complaining about being typecast and ruining their career. Really, I don't see the point in complaining. If the only role you can play well is a black dude, you're never going to get ahead in this town, and you should just accept it.

Zach Braff

#19. My favourite actors are all dead or dying. I just love Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn - I was named after her - and Cary Grant. I just love old black and white movies and the stars in them. It must have been a great time to be in Hollywood.

Katharine Isabelle

#20. 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

#21. The great thing about being the son of Maya Angelou is that I had the good fortune to grow up around some of the greatest black artists, dancers, singers, musicians, and actors of our time.

Guy Johnson

#22. There is a class system in acting just like in anything else. Black females fall in a category below black male actors.

Debra Wilson

#23. It's a tough transition really for theater actors to adjust to television or film, and all of these years later, I still have a tendency to play it too big.

Jack Black

#24. 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

#25. All actors bring something unexpected to the role because they have to translate what's on the page and make a real character out of the black-and-white text that's there in the script.

Joe Johnston

#26. 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

#27. 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

#28. My goal is to work. That's the goal of most actors or performers: to work and keep working, and do the best you can, and keep growing and changing, trying to improve your craft.

Michael Ian Black

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. Garrel has succeeded in filming something we have never seen before: the faces of actors in silent films during those moments when the black intertitles, with their paltry, illuminated words, filled the screen.

Serge Daney

#32. 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

#33. Showtime has given new, young filmmakers - black, white, across the board - an opportunity to make films, as well as actors who want to cross over into directing.

Morris Chestnut

#34. If I or any other black can deliver at the box office, I'll get a lot of work. Too many young actors, regardless of their color, try to play an attitude on camera and fail to remember their job is to fit into an entertainment.

Mario Van Peebles