Chadwick Boseman Quotes
Actor
As an African-American actor, a lot of our stories haven't been told.
I started out as a writer and a director. I started acting because I wanted to know how to relate to the actors. When people ask me what I do, I don't really say that I'm an actor, because actors often wait for someone to give them roles.
I like ambiguity because you may be the villain in someone else's story and the hero in your own, and I think very often, African-American characters are either one thing or the other. You shouldn't have to be perfectly good or perfectly bad. You don't even have to be magical.
A superhero movie is only as great as its villains.
You have to cherish things in a different way when you know the clock is ticking, you are under pressure.
The only difference between a hero and the villain is that the villain chooses to use that power in a way that is selfish and hurts other people.
People don't want to experience change; they just want to wake up, and it's different.
I'm an artist. Artists don't need permission to work. Regardless of whether I'm acting or not, I write. I write when I'm tired in fact, because I believe your most pure thoughts surface.
In television you don't have a lot of time to spend with the role or the script. Typically you get a script a week prior to shooting. Sometimes it's even less time, not enough time to dream about the role.
I would love to have an ocean of love right now. That said, the number-one rule of acting is, 'Do not seek approval from the audience.' People don't realize that. You can't do stuff to get applause. You have to live in the truth.
When you're doing a character, you want to know the full landscape. You want to know them spiritually, mentally and physically.
Some people would view Jackie Robinson as a very safe African-American, a docile figure who had a tendency to try to get along with everyone, and when you look at his history, you learn that he has this fire that allows him to take this punishment but also figure out savvy ways of giving it back.
People have said, 'You don't need to do any more biopics. You don't need to play any more real people.' I don't agree with that.
Every year, Hollywood is looking for that new, white leading man and new white starlet that audiences fall in love with. But they're not looking for the next Denzel Washington, Will Smith or Sidney Poitier.
Guys are natural problem solvers - they like to have strategies.
Sometimes when you're acting, you only need a little bit of something to sort of channel or, you know, transport into a place.
I love all types of music. Jazz, classical, blues, rock, hip-hop. I often write scripts to instrumentals like a hip-hop artist. Music inspires me to write. It's either music playing or completely silent. Sometimes distant sound fuels you. In New York there's always a buzzing beneath you.
The thing I love about Marvel in general is that they deal with people. They deal with the human being first: Who is inside the suit? Who is the person that obtained this power or this ability?
There's nothing more stressful than your stomach growling. But interestingly enough, some of my best writing came when I was poor and hungry - living off water and oatmeal, mind clear.
Colonialism is the cousin of slavery.
Nobody has to give me permission to write.
When you play characters, you shouldn't just be putting on their characteristics - you should be finding it inside yourself.
I was raised in a sort of village. I have a huge family, and I think there is strength in that. It helped me to deal with some of the complications of living in the South because I always felt like I belonged, no matter what.
I try to look at every role the same way, regardless of whether the character is real or the character is a fantasy. I always start from myself, because you have to know yourself first.
When it comes down to it, I'd rather have an action figure than a Golden Globe.
We live in a world where people can ridicule you at the push of the button. They can question you at the push of a button.
People of African descent, most of us grew up accepting and loving Spider-Man. I still love Spider-Man. I still love the Incredible Hulk. I still have those characters that were white role models, superheroes, heroes - whatever you want to call it. You basically had no choice but to accept those.
I would love to play Jimi Hendrix.
One of the first things I was taught as an actor was, 'Don't judge the character.'
I played Little League baseball, but I also played basketball. Basketball was my primary sport. When you play basketball seriously, a lot of times, through the summer season, you continue playing. So that replaced me playing baseball.
When I met Rachel Robinson for the first time, she is a regal woman, and she was like a grandmother in that first meeting.
I'm not really interested in being a superhero. That's not a box I've been trying to check off.
You're not free unless you can show the good and the bad, all sides of them. So to me, when I play a character, it's important that I can show every aspect of them.
There's the phrase of 'making America great again,' but how did we make America great? Who did it? It was Thurgood Marshall who did it. It was Thurgood Marshall who made America live up to its constitution, to its dream. He pushed the envelope to make sure that we were equal.
I remember my first agent telling me - because they found me as an actor, but I was probably more interested in writing and maybe directing - they were like, 'Well, you can't do both things.' And I was like, 'I'm gonna show you.'
I think there's a difference between a working actor, a movie star and a celebrity. They're all three different things.
As a director, it is important to understand the actor's process.
I'm not afraid to work.
I have my own personal masticating juicer at home. I sort of picked it up from friends a few years ago, and it just gives me more energy. Mostly green juice. Spinach, celery, kale, green apples, lemon, sometimes ginger - you know, like, nasty, euuugghhhh!
I would go through these cycles of being really, really focused on work, and not being around anyone, to being around everyone. And that could be distracting. It was nothing or everything.
I'm not so keen on letting my car drive itself.
I don't have a smart house. My house is very dumb.
In TV, you're basically shooting an episode in 10 to 14 days; 14 days is a luxury situation. And in film, you have anywhere from a month to three months, or it can be even longer than that, depending on what the production is.
I said yes too much. I said yes to certain projects that weren't for me. It was somebody else's vision and somebody else's dream and somebody else's artistic endeavor, but it didn't necessarily fit in my grand scheme.
I'm not one of those guys who walks around with a flip phone who doesn't want to be connected. There are times when I'm tech-friendly, and there are times when I personally do want to shut everything off because I'm more creative when I shut off.
I know that baseball players have certain rituals or habits that they develop, because sometimes it becomes somewhat superstitious if they get on a streak and want to do the same thing over and over again.
I majored in directing. However, I did spend some time at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, so I am somewhat well-versed in African Studies.
When they call you and say, 'So you want to play 'Black Panther?'' if you know what 'Black Panther' is, there's no way in the world you're going to say no because there's a lot of opportunity for magic to happen.
The projects that I end up doing, that I want to be involved with in any way, have always been projects that will be impactful, for the most part, to my people - to black people.
I thought I would draw or paint or be an architect. I was always drawing portraits. My mom put me in art classes in the summer.
For me, being a complete artist means not necessarily just being in front of the camera, but being behind the camera or being the originator or creator of something.
I got scars from every film I've done, every TV show.
I wasn't a comic book geek as a kid. I read some, but it was just like, 'Oh, I have this comic book here.' It wasn't like I was collecting them.
I'm the kind of guy who comes home and checks scores for everything. I'm a sports fan in general, so I pretty much keep up with who's ahead in a division and everything that's going on.
When you make movies, it's such an important period of time, when you look back at each one of them. You want to be able to say that you did something that was a challenge and that changed you.
It was a big thing for me to read black writers. 'Fences,' by August Wilson. James Baldwin's 'Amen Corner.' 'The Fire Next Time.' 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X,' of course.
Each movie you do about a real person is like a painting, and you choose certain things in the painting that you want to pull out and you want to show.
I'm from Anderson, S.C., but I grew up in the South. So I know what it is to ride to school and have Confederate flags flying from trucks in front of me and behind me, to see a parking lot full of people with Confederate flags and know what that means. I've been stopped by police for no reason.
The industry looks for white actors and actresses, but it's not the same for black actors. We have to really put the work in.
I don't read reviews, but I do get feedback from my peers and people I know, like other actors and directors and producers.
Even after I became involved in theater and involved in TV and film, I had this sort of idea that Hollywood was off limits. There was something about L.A., the mystique of it and fear of it.
Actors can have a fair amount of hate for each other, so when another actor says, 'You did your thing,' or 'That was inspiring,' you can't really ask for more than that.
As soon as I came to L.A., things immediately shifted for me. I was now actually here with the people who were making the decisions; I wasn't out in New York sending in tapes to L.A.
I watched movies, obviously, just like anybody else, but there was nothing to make me think, 'I'm going to go to L.A. and become a movie star,' or anything like that.
I might have had too many friends in my twenties.
They should probably have a James Brown aerobic tape. You would lose a lot of weight.
I think the most stressful time of my life was when I was in New York, and I didn't have money to pay my rent.
Baseball players need strength but also the ability to make fast-paced, explosive movements, so their training is all about strengthening the tendons around the bone and the joint so you don't tear the muscles from the bones.
I can definitely dance, but pedestrian dancing.
Once you start getting big roles as an actor, everything pays. So what are you making decisions on? It's about the director or the script or whatever. But before you reach that point, you're taking jobs with, say, a theater company, in spite of the fact that it's not paying your bills.
I can't even imagine something being more fun than playing James Brown onstage.
I'd taken, like, maybe some African dance classes a couple of times, but I wasn't a musical theater person at all.
There are some stories I want to tell that I think it'd be cool to see an African-American dude do.
I studied at Howard. I studied at Oxford.
When I got out of school, I didn't really understand the differences in the different aspects of the business. For example, doing a play - where does that take you versus, you know, concentrating on independent films? You might have one thing in your head, but the things you're doing don't really lead down the right road, necessarily.