I was part of a growing community of women who were secretly dealing with harassment by Harvey Weinstein. But I also did not know that there was a world in which anybody would care about my experience with him.
All throughout filming '12 Years a Slave,' there was a focus like no other. Everyone took ownership of this film and gave their all.
I was raised in Kenya, and I always wanted to be an actor from when I was really, really little, but the first time I thought it was something that I could make a career of was when I watched 'The Color Purple.' I think I was nine, maybe, and I saw people that looked like me - Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah.
In the madness, you have to find calm.
Steve McQueen is a genius. And I think that word is overused, but I think with Steve it's rightly used. He's a genius.
I hope we can form a community where a woman can speak up about abuse and not suffer another abuse by not being believed and instead being ridiculed.
There have been rumors and rumors and rumors about my love life. That's the one area that I really like to hold close to my heart.
It's great to have something to dress up for. You know, I spent three years in slacks at drama school, so now I like putting a dress on.
I grew up in Nairobi, which is the capital of Kenya, so it's hustle and bustle, and there's always something going on.
Growing up, I had really bad skin. I had a skin disorder. Yes, I did. And my mother went to great lengths to try to find something to remedy it. I remember she took a trip to Madagascar and came back with all these alternative, medicinal herbs and stuff. They didn't smell so good, but I think they worked some magic.
I can speak of actors that I love. I love Cate Blanchett, Viola Davis, her tenacity. I love Charlize Theron. She's so surprising and so exhilarating, the kinds of projects she takes on. Marion Cotillard as well.
The set of '12 Years a Slave' was an extremely joyous one! We all recognized that we were making a powerful, necessary and beautiful film, and we weren't about doing it without that sense of responsibility, and we recognized that we needed each other to tell this story. We also knew we needed to hold each other up as we told the story.
What's becoming very obvious to me is that fashion is art.
I went to an all-boys high school, and they accepted girls in only the two A.P. classes.
I'm still trying to get over the fact that my name is being mentioned with people like Brad Pitt.
Our business is complicated because intimacy is part and parcel of our profession; as actors, we are paid to do very intimate things in public. That's why someone can have the audacity to invite you to their home or hotel, and you show up.
I always envisioned working in film and in theater. Theater and film are not, they're not in any way substitutable. What I love about theater is so different from what I love about film, and I enjoy the craft of both.
My mother talked about the stories I used to spin as a child of three, before I started school. I would tell this story about what school I went to and what uniform I wore and who I talked to at lunchtime and what I ate, and my mother was like, 'This girl does not even go to school.'
That's such a powerless place for me to think about: what is working against me. I don't think of what I don't have; I think of what I do and use that to get the next thing.
As human beings, we aren't as individual as we'd like to believe we are. And I think that's what makes acting possible. Despite the fact that I have not experienced something, I have it in my human capacity to imagine it and to put myself in someone else's shoes, and to take someone else's circumstances personally.
