Quote

I definitely am drawn to strong females who are successful, smart women because I am a woman like that. I think it's important to portray those kinds of women on film and television. Especially as a black woman, I think it's important.

Ever since I started doing television, I tended to get cast, for the most part, as these strong, intelligent women... Which is wonderful, but very rarely do I get to be the goofy girl that I am.

I'm attracted to films that have strong female characters because there are strong female characters in my life. That's my own reality, so it's a doorway into a world for me.

I love and really respect strong women. I'm obsessed with Scarlett Johansson and Drew Barrymore and Penelope Cruz. They are just really incredibly strong-willed, intelligent females in the industry.

I think it's really rare to see women on television who are brilliant, selfish, vain, fallible - and I feel like I have all those capacities in myself, so it's good to see people in the media representing all of those things.

I think the people who cast films tend to think of me in regard to strong women with integrity and a lot of it has been very good.

There aren't enough good roles for strong women. I wish we had more female writers. Most of the female characters you see in films today are the 'poor heartbroken girl.'

I do like strong women in my movies. I have five sisters, so I've just grown up with that model.

Do people think women from Bollywood aren't smart?

There are so many brilliant women on television right now.