Chiwetel Ejiofor

“David Mamet was great to work with. He was everything that I thought he would be as a director. He's incredibly articulate, an easy collaborator. Extraordinarily knowledgeable about film and writing.”

“We always want to live in an environment where there's no artificial block to good work.”

“I have an evolving relationship with my father, and his memory, especially the older I get. I know that some of the things that interested him are things that interest me.”

“Depending on what your interest in theater is, I always recommend working on plays. It's a great way to be introduced to the field, and also a great way to be seen by agents and representation. I'm also a great advocate for studying acting at a drama school or a college.”

“The truth is, it's a totalitarian dictatorship when you're making films. You are the boss. You can listen to other people, and it can be a benevolent dictatorship, but it's a dictatorship nonetheless. A lot of directors go past their first experience, that's what they've come away with.”

“I can watch a film, even a film that I've been in, and think, 'I'm not sure, 100 percent, what I think about it.' I'm not sure what I think about what I've done in it.”

“When I first had my eyebrows waxed, I was pretty disturbed.”

“I feel that I don't have to wait around for good scripts anymore, that I can get things moving more quickly. I can ring up directors I like and say I'm keen to work with them, which is pretty great.”

“I had done a couple of auditions for 'Amistad' and didn't feel it was going to go any further - and then the call came about heading to Los Angeles to work with Steven Spielberg. It was surreal: exciting, challenging, overwhelming.”

“If you're looking at people like Patrice Lumumba, you are looking at people who had a very definite plan, and events overran them.”

“I was probably 14 or 15 when I was first on stage at school doing 'Measure for Measure.' I immediately felt it was a great way of expressing oneself at a moment when I didn't think I could express myself, really. I suddenly had access to this range of emotions and thoughts and feelings that were there in me. I was surprised by that.”

“It's a strange thing, but you get this click in your brain; the wonderful feeling that the entirety of a character is suddenly available and accessible to you.”

“It's hard to maintain a life when you do a play. You feel you have to pretend to go through a normal day, knowing that in the evening you'll be doing this.”

“I was the classic middle child in some ways, the one who could have been a priest in an alternate universe.”

“I love the theater community and theater life, and would love to figure out the distinctive differences between Broadway and the West End.”

“I think I enjoy working obviously as a lead, but also you know I feel I'm also a character actor as well, so I enjoy approaching various projects in all sort of capacities. Any film I have been able to do I feel very fortunate to have been a part of.”

“Sometimes television can just jump from one bit of plot to the next, and the words fill in the in-between.”

“I enjoy doing everything, comedy and drama. I just look for the characters really and what they offer.”

“The Second World War simplified things like race, and people came down on very clear lines.”

“I became an actor by doing school plays and youth theaters, and then National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. And then I did study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. For me that was a good way to enter the field, to work in the theater.”