It's quite hard to find a ballsy or complex character. So the roles I've taken are those. Lot's of people put me in the dark category.
I have my dark side. You have your dark side. From the second that we have a brain, there are things that are not right - we are human beings with all these illusions and complexes and everything. That's attractive to me.
Hymns have always sounded like sung spells to me. I never felt included in the magic of the God songs I heard growing up - I knew I was going to hell before anyone ever told me that I was. People found comfort in this all-knowing source, but I felt frightened and found out. I developed some weird and very dramatic complexes.
My mum gave me pretty good genes in that department. She had gorgeous skin. That good English complexion. She never seemed to have a blemish that I knew of.
But for real, for me, I feel like with the red lipstick thing it all depends on the pair of complexion. I'm just being for real. You have to be fair skinned to get away with that.
My heritage is really important to me. I've always had that olive complexion and the squished nose, and I just think it's important to do the best I can to be a good role model.
I made the decision to turn pro, and I remember what Ali said to me: 'Get Angelo Dundee. He's the right complexion with the right connection.' He knew boxing. Our relationship was so genuine, so sincere.
It wasn't that the teachers were bad. From what I can remember, they were pretty good. It was about the selection of books. It was about not seeing my young life reflected back to me: my family dynamics, the noise and complexities of my neighborhood, the things I loved, like ice cream trucks and Kool-Aid.
I needed to let go of the idea of a God who was mad at me for feeling how I was feeling. Now, I bask in an understanding of the divine that delights in truth and the complexities of the human experience - even when it's not very 'clean.'
In Hollywood, there is one dominant voice. It is a white, male, straight gaze. When I talk about positive portrayals of black people and women, I'm saying complexity. I'm not saying goody-two-shoes, everything's okay. No. The positive view of me is to see me as I am: the 'good,' the 'bad,' the gray. That is a positive portrayal.
People are composed of many things, and in my work, what influences me is the complexity of people - the chiaroscuro of dark and light. When I play a strong guy, I try to find, where is he weak? And, conversely, when I play a weak guy, where is he strong?
Being a food show and being me, I always kicked it up a notch, which means I would always elevate the spice level or the complexity of a particular dish. So, it was always like we're going to kick this up a little bit.
The Obama administration made it illegal for me to loan any money to anyone in the military. I have one compliance guy just for a pawn shop. It's everything from Homeland Security, FBI, the local police department, IRS - all these regulations I have to keep an eye on constantly, and it's just overwhelming for a small business.
I believe myself to be the type of person who does not complicate his life. I have always lived my life without dramatizing things, whether the good things that have happened to me or the bad. I simply live those moments.
I have this natural want to... when things sound very easy and straightforward, something inside me always makes me want to take a left turn. If it comes to me and it's too simple, there has to be a more complicated route. I will complicate things like that at times.
For me, keeping it simple is the best way to live life, to not complicate things, to sort of keep things in perspective.
I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.
Critics try to pin so many different inaccuracies on me and my music; they look at the complicated things and try to simplify them. They think they can nail your whole life down just by knowing the bare bones of your history in partaking in 10 minutes of conversation.
It's a very difficult thing losing a parent, but I think there's an added complication for me, because he was so well-loved and he had this very open charm that made people feel they had a personal relationship with him.
There is always going to be depth and layers to people and that's what interests me in a character: when there is some problem to overcome, when there is a complication to understand in a person.
