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I feel a responsibility to continue creating complex roles for black women, especially young black women.

The roles that I feel I get, or handed to me, or whatever, are not that interesting. I don't think it's a problem that's specific to black women. I think it's a problem that's specific to movie-making in America.

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.

I'm not playing a role. I'm being myself, whatever the hell that is.

There's a lot of good roles for men, always, and for very young girls. But for women, not so many.

I'm kind of in a middle space, being marketed as a biracial actor. Roles are written either stereotypically black, or they're written 'normal,' which is just code for white.

There is a large element of me in every role I do.

Being a black woman, there's so many different sides of us. We are funny, silly, romantic, professional, smart, and we have good jobs.