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I don't feel that I was often compartmentalized as an African-American actor, yet I am fully aware of the plight that actors, directors and producers of color face in our industry. I choose to focus on being proactive in creating opportunities for myself and others while acknowledging that we are not playing on a level playing field.

There have been so few decent films involving Negroes that right away everybody expects every film to do everything. But when you make a flick, there are maybe two things you're trying to put into that flick. You can put the other things in another time.

I think that if we really want to break it down, that non-black filmmakers have had many, many years and many, many opportunities to tell many, many stories about themselves, and black filmmakers have not had as many years, as many opportunities, as many films to explore the nuances of our reality.

When you're black in Hollywood, you know, your first role is going to be on a crime drama. That's - everybody knows that.

The truth is, no, we don't live in a post-racial state anywhere in America, and this is particularly true in Hollywood.

Hollywood has definitely grown, in embracing the inclusion of Latinos in the world, because, for some time, we didn't exist. We were not part of any stories.

Making African American films are hard in Hollywood. We need to rely on a support network and bring more cohesion to different filmmakers, actors, producers etc. It's a very difficult business. There aren't a lot of Africans Americans or people of color in high positions in Hollywood that we can green-light films.

The funny thing about cinema is, usually when they do a story that has African Americans in it, there always has to be a white guy who's the savior.

I don't think people have been able to deal with the fact that African American filmmakers can make movies about life and relationships.

As an African-American actor, a lot of our stories haven't been told.