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I've always really wanted to make a film on what it means to be white in a country that's getting less and less white.

I don't like to see projects that are all black or all white. It's how life is. I do like to make sure that I do a nice black family film; that's like keeping my home base. I do other things, but I like to always come back to a positive family film, because of all the negative influences today.

It was jarring to be berated for 'acting white' when I was placed in a predominantly black middle school in Southern California. I was also chubby, into boys who weren't into me, and tried too hard to fit into this 'blackness' I was supposed to be.

The perceived wisdom is that people do not go in large numbers to black-and-white movies anymore - which is a great shame, but I'd love to make a black-and-white movie one day.

I was always told that I'd have to do a movie with a white guy in order to get the money. That's the way it was. That made me feel that I should have chosen some other profession, so I could have gotten my just deserts.

I can't stop watching black and white movies. I live in a world of Warner Brothers movies and all of that stuff from an older era, and I love them. I still love them. When I look at them, I sometimes think I was born in the wrong time.

My interest as an artist is to illuminate the lives of black folks. I definitely am focused on films that illustrate all that we are and all our nuance and all our complicated beauty and mess, and when you're telling those stories, you gotta have black actors.

I've made it my mission to make movies starring African American actors and about the African American experience and put them in the mainstream. They're very universal stories I've told - every movie I've done.

One aspect of my mum's personality that has influenced me is her love of Hollywood and the golden era of black-and-white films.

As a black actress you've got to work doubly hard. But it doesn't ever get me to the point where I give up on myself. It just motivates me to be more prepared, focus and disciplined. That's why I care so much about doing black films and making sure that we represent and are represented correctly.