My acting ability would have sent me back to the post office. It was my singing that got me jobs. Ironically, now, people think of me as an actor and don't know me much as a singer.
I took a psychology class, and I think the study of the mind can help me further my acting ability. It's also taught me about getting into an environment with new people and acting like you've known them forever.
People always ask me if I'm going to stop modeling because I have started an acting career. I hope to continue to model for years to come.
An acting career usually has about a shelf life of ten years before people get sick of seeing you. It's a good thing to have a job to fall back on and I really do enjoy directing.
I think the part of my acting career where I've been more successful, I've been incredibly cushioned. People are much too nice to you. You go into politics, and people are absolutely brutal. You've got proper enemies, and they're vicious. It's very invigorating.
I took an acting class. After the first day, the teacher quit, so they said take another. When I saw 'How to be a Stand-up Comedian,' it resonated. I realized I'd rather make 200 people laugh than make one person cry.
If you want to be a screenwriter, take an acting class to get a sense of what you're asking actors to do. Learning other skills will help you communicate with people and respect what they do.
I wasn't very good in my serious acting class. Sometimes people took our class so seriously, so I used to, sort of, make fun of people after class. And so a friend of mine said, 'Why don't you do the comedy thing.' That's how it all worked out.
My mom graduated from the University of Michigan, which is a great school. Then she got her Master's from NYU. She wanted to be an actress, so when she graduated, she had a dream, and she started following it. She moved to New York and took acting classes with people like Denzel Washington.
To be honest, there are so many things I learned in acting school beyond the method; it was a safe place to practice. So acting school was about exercising that acting muscle and doing it every single day - and having people tell you that you're bad every single day! Which pushes you to work even harder.
I remember getting out of acting school and friends of mine talking about, like, 'You know, I don't think I'm gonna do TV.' Like, people putting on these airs of being picky. And I was never a snob about it.
When I got out of acting school, I was lucky to have gotten any job at all. A lot of people hiring African American actresses - it was right after 'Roots,' and for society, not me, it was great. Nice richly dark-skinned people was the fashion, and I was not.
I don't want to be a historical action figure or treated like I'm dead. Like one of those people where they go, 'Oh, isn't she dead?' And then I walk up, and they're like, 'Whoa.' I can't really complain... because I've made myself into a historical action figure. I was like, 'Yeah, come on in!'
If I am just, like, on a run by myself, I've never been stopped. Even if I'm at Target buying my own action figure, people would not believe that it's me. I actually was like, 'This is me!'
I think people get confused: people think 'strong female characters' mean you need to play an action figure.
People assume that 'The Expendables' is old school, but it's only old school because that's the way I know how to make an action film. It's pretty real.
You get dinged for wanting to do a comedy, then wanting to do a big-budget action film, and then wanting to do an indie. But you can't let other people trying to label you get in the way of trying to do something artistically.
At least in making an action film, there's always going to be someone who wants to see a car chase. Even if a lot of the people don't like it, there will be a lot of people that do. But bad comedy is just garbage.
Action films are great, but an action film that has characters that are compelling and a story that people can care about is something even better. We love to see action heroes that are vulnerable, that are sensitive, that are family people, that are accessible.
People don't want to always see a comedy or an action film. If the film in a particular genre is made well, then it will see its share of success.
