Jeffrey Wright
Well, I look at it like this: When you go to a restaurant, the less you know about what happens in the kitchen, the more you enjoy your meal. If the soup tastes good, everything's cool, and you don't necessarily want to know what's in it. The same thing holds true with movies.Collection: Cool
I was a political science major in college because that's where my head was.Collection: Science
Collaboration is a multilane highway, going in all directions. If there isn't reciprocity, it fails, and it's unsatisfying.
Comedy's all math, figuring out the timing.
I do have characters who are more well known than I am, which suits me fine.
I played football and lacrosse in high school. They wanted me to play football at Amherst, which I did not do because my schedule was full enough as it was. But over the course of my student days, I played pretty much every sport out there.
Out of the blue, I received this offer and invitation to be a part of this movie, 'The Good Dinosaur.' I turned to my Pixar experts, my kids, and asked them what this could all be about. Of course, they flipped out, and it was pretty obvious from their reaction that I was going to do this.
When I started off as an actor, the last thing I wanted to do in the world was make money. I was under the impression, when I started off as an actor, that the more money I made, the more it would diminish from my creativity and my capacity to be an artist.
At the most base level, what an actor represents to the film industry is an investment. Depending on the risk profile, an investor needs 1,000 reasons to commit and one reason not to. That means you've got to do more work on your own, and that the machine is not going to necessarily do the blocking for you. The machine rarely accepted my code.
My first-ever job was when I was 14 or 15 in Washington, D.C., a job that I got through Marion Barry's summer-youth-employment program. It was working in the locker room of a public swimming pool, deep inside Anacostia in Southeast D.C., about five to 10 minutes from my house.
I find that the work I do as an actor that's most challenging commands an athleticism or, certainly, a physicality. And also a rigor, a physical rigor.
Shaft was a pop culture figure along t he lines of, I guess, Dirty Harry - except that he wasn't as much of a racist. So yeah, I was always a fan.
If a director can't figure out what they might get from me or whether he or she wants to work with me based on what I've done, then I can't tell them anything more than what they don't know already.
What I've appreciated about the 'Bond' films is there's always been a subtle social relevance to them. They've always commented on the times.
I think I was afraid of what I might say when I got onto someone's stage or in front of someone's camera.
The great thing about movies is that they're collaborative. And the worst thing is that they're collaborative.
Too often a story is examined through biased eyes, without a sensitivity for everyone who forged it. It's seen from the point of view of the great white savior, and rarely is the perspective of the slave a part.
For lack of any clearer idea, I just started acting one day. It had been in the back of my head for a while, but I think in some ways I was afraid to do it, and finally I just stepped up.
I like New York because you're kind of forced to smell everybody else's funk. So it keeps you biologically attached to the world around you.
And it's one reason why I don't go to a lot of movies - they're more and more dominated by corporate values and fiscal concerns as opposed to cinematic concerns.
I like to do theater and hopefully be effective. Most actors, at least contemporary actors of my generation, can't do it. They don't have the chops.
I'm not sure whether Los Angeles borders on the ocean or on oblivion. I always feel that I'm two steps away from the other side when I'm out there. It's more like a vacation place or a place to visit than a place to hunker down.
Some musicians play blues, others classical jazz or bluegrass. I like to play political roles because I can merge my political interests with my creative interests.
Well, I like to be kept on my toes. I look for a challenge. I don't like to recreate steps that I've already walked. I like to see if I can create something new.
I don't mind that I am not necessarily a household name, because I think my characters have outshined me. That was by design. And I'm not wanting for appreciation.
I don't really consider myself a black man in Hollywood. I live in Brooklyn... and on purpose.
I started surfing when I was working on 'The Hunger Games,' out on the north shore of Oahu, so about four years ago. I used to skateboard as a kid, kind of religiously, until I broke my leg riding in a pool when I was about 14 and I couldn't play football that fall.
I, Jeffrey Wright, the actor, actually signed on to the 'Westworld' Delos website. My profile came back as a Libertine, which is probably reasonably accurate.
We really don't discover fully what 'Westworld' is for this first season, until we get there. The first 10 episodes are the journey. The colors become brighter, the vistas become clearer, and the history is more understood with each step we take along the way.
I used to say that 'happy' was like 'lucky,' kind of imaginary. But now that I'm married and have children, I find that happiness is a real space.
From an animation perspective, it doesn't get better than Pixar. You're working so much in the blind because the huge circle of collaborators that's required to pull off a film like this means that you are just one small arc in that large circle. The level of trust that you have to give into is significant.
What I've learned in my career as an actor is that you're only as good as your collaborators. The process is many things, but it is wholly collaborative, particularly with something like 'Westworld,' which is a 10-episode-per-season gig, and we're just now on the 7th episode.
My mom used to take me to the theater to see the tours that would come through D.C., and I loved it. I loved it. I was absolutely enthralled by the theater and by that world.
I took a class in college... I think we were reading some short Chekhov plays, and I knew the first day of the class that I was going to be an actor. It was just the bizarrest thing, but it just felt like home.
When I think back on the work that I've been able to do and the work in my career of the highest quality, a huge portion of that has been on HBO. That didn't happen by accident.
It's one thing to know your lines, another to be able to deliver them. The taste of the pudding is in the delivery.
That period, doing 'Angels in America' in '94 and then filming with 'Basquiat' in '95, those were gateway years for me as an artist. Two gateways, one into the film industry and one into the world of theater, each formative to me in different, equally essential ways.
I'm gonna be on the Hawaiian beaches when I'm old.
In theater, the primary tool for me was voice. On-screen, it's the eyes.
I do a little Reddit, yeah! I pop in every now and again.
One of the first things I do when I step onto a set is I scan the set and try to take in every detail, because what I'm trying to find are tools that I can use to incorporate myself into the space and tools that I can use to make the performance authentic and to build on the authenticity of that.
I think survival, with agency intact, is heroic for anyone or anything.
I started acting when I was at Amherst my junior year, and my lacrosse career kind of started to flop sideways after that.
For me, an actor is a person who makes characters like a cobbler makes shoes.
Some of my earliest heroes were congresswomen like Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Jordan.
Our great nation put a man on the moon, but it can't train its cops to distinguish between an ordinary brown-skinned brother and a criminal.
There are too many guns.
We have more guns in our country than citizens. I think we could with maybe 100 million fewer guns. And I think we'd be OK.
I ski and grew up skiing.
When you go to a restaurant, the less you know about what happens in the kitchen, the more you enjoy your meal.Collection: Kitchen