I never heard about tefillin. I was unfamiliar with the deep history and ritual of being an Orthodox Jew. Before you get out of bed, you say a prayer, and then you get out of bed, say another one.
You look at how Barack Obama has had to conduct himself as President. It reminds me of Jackie Robinson, how he had to be very careful to reassure people that this was all right. And you still have people trying to tear him down. They make up all sorts of lies, with the goal of making him seem illegitimate.
What's nice about having an engineering degree is everybody thinks you are smart.
Traveling, I've met Ghanaian people who have seen me in minor stuff, but they see the name Ato Essandoh, and they recognize it as a Ghanaian name. They come up to me and are always so excited. You don't think about it, but they really absorb American culture.
If you get too deep into the history, what often happens to a lot of us actors is that we become stilted. We forget that we're reading about something that happened a hundred years ago. If we don't put the human emotion that would naturally be in there, we end up being stilted instead of being human beings.
You don't want to be a gimmick. You don't want to be a set piece, where people go, 'Hey, that's weird.'
Jason Bourne is supposed to be really sneaky and spry, but as soon as he walks by, everybody pulls out their cell phones and starts recording. That level of fame is wild to see.
When 'Goodfellas' is on TNT, and they've taken out all the curse words and put Tide commercials in the middle of it, I'll still watch 'Goodfellas' because it's that great of a movie.
It's not selling out, necessarily, to do something to gain some kind of notoriety that gives you the cache to do be able to go and do something else that you want. There's some dues that you just have to pay in life.
My dad, when he was young, did Shakespeare in school, and my mom was a little bit of an artist, but everybody was pragmatic.
I have the softest beard in the world. As far as growing it, it doesn't itch, and it's so non-intrusive. But, I am so sick of hair on my face and on my head. Because I'm not a really hairy guy, I'm not really used to it.
Everything musically, for me, there's two kinds of music. There's Prince and Jimi Hendrix and then Miles Davis and everything filters through that.
The Chinese Student Association at Cornell put together their own play. It was all Asian people in the cast except for me, because they wanted to do a couple of scenes about an interracial relationship. I was the only non-Asian person on stage; the entire audience was Asian apart from my 10 friends that showed up.
Quentin Tarantino and Sam Jackson are the reasons I'm an actor.
I was in chemical engineering at Cornell University. My girlfriend at the time dared me to do a play. I knew there was something I wanted, not necessarily engineering.
My parents are from Ghana. Until I was 17, I thought you had to go to college. I had no idea. I didn't know it was not an option.
Another benefit of going to Cornell is that 90 percent of your friends are doctors.
When you're a guest star on a movie or a TV show, I always say it's like being invited to a family reunion, but it's not your family. So you don't belong - they're being nice to you, but you don't fit in completely; you don't know everybody's story. You don't have a history.
Once you get my snark going, I'll just start snarking it up all over Twitter.
I have a theater company that I'm a part of, Colt Coeur, and they do some really rad projects.
