Kerry Washington
That's what acting is - it's about... having the courage to allow your audience into the private moments of your characters' lives.Collection: Courage
Today there are people trying to take away rights that our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers fought for: our right to vote, our right to choose, affordable quality education, equal pay, access to health care. We the people can't let that happen.Collection: Health
I don't talk about my personal life in the press; that's how I kept my wedding a secret.Collection: Wedding
You may not be thinking about politics, but politics is thinking about you.Collection: Politics
I am co-writing a screenplay now and I'm working on the rights to another story I want to do. So I plan to produce and direct. So, for me, I don't really feel that I am vulnerable to that sad baggage that comes with the business of filmmaking.Collection: Sad
I would wear pajamas to work every day if it were up to me.
I don't want to not be African. The goal is to live in a world where my race doesn't limit my access, where I can see myself represented in the highest level of society without any limitation.
When you have things that are very important to you in life, when there are things you want to do and be - that takes work. It takes work to show up for your own story and show up for the dream and vision you have for yourself.
I'm here not just as an actress but as a woman, an African-American, a granddaughter of Ellis Island immigrants, a person who could not have afforded college without the help of student loans and as one of millions of volunteers working to re-elect President Obama!
So many struggled so that all of us could have a voice in this great democracy and live up to the first three words of our constitution: We the people. I love that phrase so much. Throughout our country's history, we've expanded the meaning of that phrase to include more and more of us. That's what it means to move forward.
I'm doing this play right now, the new David Mamet play. It's called 'Race,' and it's very interesting how people really leave the theater filled with the desire to talk about the play and the issues and the characters, and how they're all navigating their personal views around race.
There are a lot of forms of exercise where you have to leave yourself out of the room while you force yourself to do this thing. With Pilates, I get to bring my true self. I cry, I laugh. I get to go, 'Where is my body today? What do I need today? How can I take care of myself and push myself past my comfort zone?'
Making the unbelievable believable is different on a set with 'Fantastic Four,' where it's like, 'Wind machines! Because the airship is coming in and you're pretending to be afraid!'
When I read 'Ray' for the first time, I had just quit. When I read 'The Last King of Scotland,' I had just quit. I hadn't quite quit when I read 'Scandal,' but I was feeling really unfulfilled as an actor.
I have to take care of myself in order to live life the way I want to. It's important to have rest days. But in the long run, if I don't work out for, like, three days, I feel worse, not better.
I think every girl should have a tailor in her phone. It's part of why we beat ourselves up, or why shopping is so frustrating and hard: we have this assumption that when you take something off the rack, it will fit you.
I don't think I'm even close to fulfilling my potential. And I think also that, unlike a pianist or a flutist, an actor has an instrument that is constantly changing.
I always prided myself on the fact that I could live out of milk crates forever. It was kind of my way of detaching from materialism.
You see the transformation that the arts have on young people. It changes their lives for the better. That's where my engagement is.
I think most people, when they think about the Black Panther Party, they think in very abstract, caricatured terms. They think about black fists in the air, but they don't think about the actual people, and the families, and the relationships.
I feel like any single woman of color who's been onstage has a Shakespeare monologue in her back pocket, and a monologue from 'For Colored Girls.' It's just part of what you should have, as a woman of color.
I grew up in New York, so I fell in love with acting on a stage, not in front of a camera.
The breakdown of the black community, in order to maintain slavery, began with the breakdown of the black family. Men and women were not legally allowed to get married because you couldn't have that kind of love. It might get in the way of the economics of slavery. Your children could be taken from you and literally sold down the river.
You know what's funny is that I have this ongoing relationship with the city of Washington D.C. I went to George Washington University, and my nickname was K-Dub - based on G-Dub - and I'm now on the board of trustees at George Washington University.
I come from the theater and I plan to always do theater. So I don't really see myself not being able to act even if people don't think I am sexy enough for film at 40, I'll still be acting.
I've always been a writer because I've always been a student. My mom's a retired professor, so I come from a very academic background. I love writing, you know?
About a year ago I got really exhausted from reading bad scripts and I know that I am a writer and that I have stories to tell, so I thought, 'Let's do this!' So I'm co-writing a screenplay now with another screenwriter and loving it. Absolutely loving it. And I would like to be the producer on the project and of course the lead is me.
I really love research. It's one of the things I love most about my job. I feel like it's me in the lab cooking up the character.
Every actor you work with has a different method, same with the director. You have to figure out what your shared language is and how to best support each other, and also take care of yourself.
As a young girl, my real dream was to be the woman in the shows at SeaWorld.
I wouldn't just come home from school and watch TV everyday, they had me involved in lots of local theatre. I was a very dramatic, talkative child. And that was part of my mother's creative solution - to put me in workshops and classes and children's theatre programmes.
I think generalizations of any sort are dangerous. I'll say, if that is the case - right now it's an American issue.
People don't think about the fact that when Barack Obama's parents had him - it was illegal for them to be married in several states in this country. So if we start making it okay that certain people can marry and other people can't, it's a slippery slope of civil rights. Who knows who is going to be allowed to marry or not marry next.
I think as a whole America is dealing with the issue of homophobia. We got to be really honest about whether we believe in civil rights for all people or not. As Black people we need to remember the moment that we say it's okay to disenfranchise one segment of society, we're opening the door to move backward on ourselves.
I think sometimes in life we want to ignore the problems of society and just think about the good. I believe in positive thinking and affirmative living, I also think it's really important to remember all of our disenfranchised members of society.
I'm a person who's always been politically active and passionate about people's rights.
Earlier in my career, I was much more super-sharey. There were moments when I wanted to process things that were happening to me more privately, and I didn't have the space to do it, because once you let people in, they're in, and you don't get to say, 'Oh, I want this for myself.'
I didn't grow up thinking I was pretty; there was always a prettier girl than me. So I learned to be smart and tried to be funny and develop the inside of me, because I felt like that's what I had.
When I think about any of the missteps in my life that I've made, all of which I'm grateful for, it's because I just so wanted to be truly seen and heard for who I am and was afraid I wasn't or wouldn't be.
I don't think I consciously say, 'What would Olivia Pope do?' but there's a new thread of belief in my own capacity that I think comes from her. She makes it happen. She figures it out. She fixes it.
I'm always working. My cousins call me the longshoreman of actors.
I really try to let my friends into all of my life. They know that Red-Carpet Kerry is a version of Kerry, and they know that DNC Speaker Kerry is me.
I learned through experience that it doesn't work for me to talk about my personal life. I've had earlier times in my career when I did talk about it.
I have girlfriends in this business who talk about their personal lives, and it works for them, and I love it. But not for me.
If I were somebody who spent the majority of my time saying things that were harsh and difficult to hear, I would want my visual aesthetic to be something soft and feminine, warm and easy to be around.
I have to make sure that I don't silence myself about the things that I believe in, because sometimes the fear creeps in of 'What if fewer people watch the show or fewer people hire me because I express my politics?' For me, the commitment is to never be quiet just because I'm in the public eye.
Before 'Scandal,' I was actually cast in two other pilots. Both went to series, but I was fired and recast. For both, it was because they wanted me to sound more 'girlfriend,' more like 'hood,' more 'urban.'
I've had friends of mine say, like, they're tired of 'gayface,' and I was like, 'What's gayface?' They were like, 'It's the gay version of blackface: like, come in and be more effeminate.'
I definitely feel like I'm at that point where it's nice to not have to sit at home and wait to be invited to the party, but to be creating work for yourself.
My mother is one of seven kids, so I have a lot of strong women in my family, and I have supportive, beautiful relationships with all of them.