When 'Red Tails' came along, all I knew was that they were the first African-American fighter pilots in the U.S. Air Force. I had no idea how deep the story went or about all their amazing achievements. There were a few Tuskegee Airmen on the set to make sure everything was as authentic as possible.
I am very much a girly girl as well as being this tough, athletic fighter. I grew up a tomboy. I got my first four wheeler when I was eight. I got my first dirt bike shortly after. So, I have a lot of these manly qualities, I guess you would say. But, I also like to go get dressed up every weekend.
I trained in martial arts and wanted to become a UFC fighter. That was my goal. I only really learned how to dance three weeks prior to making 'Step Up Revolution.' Dancing will always be fun, but MMA is something I'll never give up. I will eventually get back in the octagon and be fighting professionally again.
You know how a fighter always comes into the dressing room way before a fight? That's me - I'm like a fighter.
It's like I had two things pulling at me: you want to be a fighter, and you have problems. So I couldn't be a fighter, and I wasn't solving any problems.
I know that when a fighter is out of the ring for more than two years, when he comes back he isn't the same anymore. Each fighter is different. But each must think, even if something goes wrong, 'I have to make this decision and live with it for the rest of my life.'
You know when a person goes into the ring to win, or at least not to lose. I mean, when a fighter is ready and goes to fight, than it can be seen by his look. Regardless of whether he gets hit or not, he goes forward, and regardless of whether he wins or loses, he wants to go forward, and it is clear from his burning eyes.
I always wanted to tell stories. Well, at least, I always came back to the notion of storytelling when the glitz and glamour of being a special effects designer or a fighter pilot or a DEA agent wore off.
A fighter can always recover, and you never know what they're going to come back with.
The phenomena here is the foreign fighter threat, the revolving door from Europe to the region in Iraq and Syria and back through Turkey, back into Europe. And that's what happened in the Paris attackers.
It has never been a motivation thing. I'm a fighter. I always show up and give it my all.
Muhammad Ali - he was a magnificent fighter and he was an icon... Every head must bow, every knee must bend, every tongue must confess, thou art the greatest, the greatest of all time, Muhammad, Muhammad Ali.
I know I'm a good fighter, probably a great fighter. I've fought the best in the world since I was a kid, and I've been fortunate to come out on top.
My love for sports will never die. I love martial arts and I want to promote it in whichever way I can. I am a fighter first, then an actor.
I'm not going to say I'm not ready for a fighter like Canelo Alvarez.
A lot of people think Formula One isn't a sport because everyone drives a car when they go to work in the morning. But we're pulling up to six G on a corner or during breaking, which is almost like being a fighter pilot. So we have to do a lot of work on our neck muscles.
A lot of the fighters will say you'll know if a fighter's won or lost just by a fighter's eyes - whether they're scared of the other person.
Whenever I go to any particular event, people are shocked that I'm a fighter. To be a fighter, I have to look a certain way, and to be an actress, I have to look a certain way. I have to change that; I've joined acting to do meaningful cinema and to show that there is much more than glamour that actresses can offer.
How much abuse is a fighter expected to endure before he can be allowed to show some concern for his own welfare? Anyone who has been around fighters knows they all share the same secret: They are more afraid of embarrassment and humiliation than injury. Do fans and writers use this fact against them in what we celebrate or criticize?
My father's death from prostate cancer in 1993 was tragic. He never complained about pain. He was a fighter. By the time he was ready to die he wasn't able to die in the way that he wanted to, which seemed an outrage to me.
I promise you, every insurgent, freedom fighter, and stray gunman in Iraq who we arrested knew the ropes, knew that the way out was to announce he had been tortured by the Americans, ill treated, or prevented from reading the Koran or eating his breakfast or watching the television.
Mine is an unarmed people, whose children have never seen a fighter or a tank or a warship.
The first fight I saw live, the fighter I was shadowing lost in front of a crowd of forty thousand people. The scale of that is staggering to me. Undergoing that overlap between something very personal and something very public strikes me as both admirable and also somewhat terrifying.
For me, true beauty has nothing to do with wrinkles and everything to do with the fact that my maternal grandmother raised five children just after the war and remained a fighter throughout her life. True beauty is the slick of red lipstick my paternal grandmother would put on before going to church on Sunday.
My father was a fighter pilot, so I moved around the world when I was young. Then I ended up in Kansas. I'd just sort of gravitated toward the arts, and I had always loved music and really loved theater even though I didn't want to act.
During practice, I train with both women and men. I think it's good to have a mixture of strengths because both have different fighting styles. Every person offers something different, and the more body types you get used to, the better fighter you will become.
I'm world champion, so if I'm not ready for another fighter at 154, I don't deserve to be world champion. That's the way I look at it and what I firmly believe.
There is a lot more to me than just being a crazy fighter.
The woeful tales of 'Super Mario Bros.' and 'Street Fighter' have taught studios that merely slapping a name to a movie is not enough to bring in the fans of the franchise. Also, the way games now unfold their stories more parallels that of a movie, with characters and plot points actually meaning as much as a high score.
The homegrown terrorists are the most significant because any fighter returning from Syria to the United States would likely be identified and detected by our intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
What I'm concerned about are two things. I think one that John Miller talked about, and that's the radicalization over the Internet that ISIS is very adept at doing. The other one is a foreign fighter threat.
It is unnecessary to say that Fidel Castro possesses the high qualities of a fighter and statesman: our path, our struggle, and our triumph we owed to his vision.
I believe in my abilities as a fighter.
