My parents were all about education. My mother was a librarian - she retired after 30 years - and she made sure that we were always at museums, that we went to plays.

It was a natural for me to end up in the theater because I'd done a lot of reading about it.

I was a huge O. J. Simpson fan.

I think if you just hang in there long enough and keep doing what you know is your sweet spot, I think the world eventually catches up to you.

I would love to take a crack at 'Long Day's Journey Into Night.'

We were raised in the black community not to trust the police, and I believe, in the white community, they were raised to actually be a policeman.

I remember I was up for the role of Jim in 'Huck Finn,' and because I went to Harvard and Yale, they didn't think I would be able to play a slave. I said, 'Oh, please.' I had to go in there and prove to them that I wasn't too intelligent to play a slave.

Family is funny, and so it was not an unnatural thing for me, growing up, not to know anything about my dad or about the Vance side of our family.

We have to give people dreams; we have to give people hope. In terms of government, in terms of society, that's our goal. You can't have a group of people that don't dream, that see themselves as dead or in jail.

Wes Anderson is a perfectionist, so you have to just be ready to try it this way, try it this way, try it that way, and then try it this way. And then, once you think you've got it all and it's done, then you're going to be called back in two or three months so you can try it that way and try it this way. You've got to give him all of it.