What I've been able to do with my character, Madea, and the other characters, with the jokes, is use it as an anesthetic to get to the heart and soul of real issues. And what I've found on stage over the years is that, while making people laugh, I can drop in pearls of wisdom.
If you actually do cold readings, it's very close to how people actually talk, because you're experiencing these thoughts anew every moment, and trying to make them come out coherently.
History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.
I didn't expect people would embrace 'Ang Probinsyano' the way they did during its first year.
I used to love watching Angela Lansbury and other people when they were doing voice-overs for Disney shows. You'd see them doing these wild gestures in front of the microphone. I used to think, 'Is that really necessary?' What you realize when you're doing it is that that's the only way.
When I was a kid, people people would always say, 'Oh you look like Chilli from TLC.' It wasn't until I did 'Akeelah and the Bee' that people started saying I looked like Angela Bassett, but before then it was Chilli.
I love memoirs and biographies, learning about other people's lives. Two of the ones that I loved so much were actually edited by the same person who edited my book, too. I loved 'Angela's Ashes.' I loved 'Glass Castle' so much.
We didn't build the interstate system to connect New York to Los Angeles because the West Coast was a priority. No, we webbed the highways so people can go to multiple places and invent ways of doing things not thought of by the persons building the roads.
People don't live in Los Angeles because we are tied to the same old, same old. We live in Los Angeles because of the intoxicating energy of new beginnings that permeate our city.
I was playing pretty boys and these angelic roles like Nicholas Nickleby and all that stuff. And I was like, 'What am I doing? This isn't who I am, as a man or an artist.' I had to overcome people's belief that I was too pretty to be a badass.
People think I'm goofy. I don't have that Angelina Jolie air to me. I wish that I did, and that's an insecurity of mine.
People compare me to Angelina Jolie, and she's so serious and stoic. I'm the opposite.
I've never been like Angelina Jolie, who at one time was spewing out this prototype Bad Girl stuff for people to consume. I've never boxed myself in that way. People can create boxes for me by all means, but it doesn't mean I'm going to step inside them.
I've dressed what fashion thinks of as the 'It' girls like Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, but I also just love people like Kathy Bates and Leslie Jones.
I read everything. I'll read a John Grisham novel, I'll sit and read a whole book of poems by Maya Angelou, or I'll just read some Mary Oliver - this is a book that was given to me for Christmas. No particular genre. And I read in French, and I read in German, and I read in English. I love to see how other people use language.
I don't often get angered by the things press spokespeople say. Most of these people have difficult jobs and are often forced to be the public faces of policies they had nothing to do with creating.
I was certainly not a class clown; I confused and angered a lot of people with my sense of humor.
For us tall people, the whole key is that your hips and your knees should form a right angle when you sit down. That's where backs and hips get to be problems for big guys.
It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle.
You always need to make sure that you're looking at every angle and every perspective so that people, when they read the story, know what's happening. You have to write for everyone.
