Zitat des Tages von Chiwetel Ejiofor:
Different people approach the universe in different ways, but they also approach their own expectations in different ways.
In England, there's no acknowledgement the invention of slavery came from Britain.
Since I started acting, I always or often find work takes precedence with me. And that is not necessarily a great rule for life.
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.
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.
If you're looking at people like Patrice Lumumba, you are looking at people who had a very definite plan, and events overran them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When I first had my eyebrows waxed, I was pretty disturbed.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I was already devouring literature and I was the ripe old age of 15 when I decided to be an actor. I just thought plays were the most fantastic way of expressing life. I thought I'd discovered Shakespeare - 'hey, there's a new guy in town, don't know if anyone's read him.' I was just excited about the whole thing, from day one.
Sometimes television can just jump from one bit of plot to the next, and the words fill in the in-between.
I was the classic middle child in some ways, the one who could have been a priest in an alternate universe.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I was probably 14 or 15 when I was first on stage at school doing 'Measure for Measure.' I immediately felt it was a great way of expressing oneself at a moment when I didn't think I could express myself, really. I suddenly had access to this range of emotions and thoughts and feelings that were there in me. I was surprised by that.
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.
I can run a good few miles. I box a little.
