Courtney B. Vance

“When I got out of Yale Drama School, I was completely broke.”

“I've done a lot of theater, and I know that it's a different audience each time who doesn't know the story, and we have to tell it.”

“When your tummy is full - even while shooting for long hours - you feel good.”

“From the outside, there's a lot of glitz. They see you on the red carpet, but they don't see what it takes to get there.”

“Around 1969, my family had just bought a house in a lower-middle-class white neighborhood two blocks away from school. Then, all of a sudden, all the white people left the neighborhood and the school.”

“I think if you just hang in there long enough and keep doing what you know is your sweet spot, I think the world eventually catches up to you.”

“I would love to take a crack at 'Long Day's Journey Into Night.'”

“We have to give people dreams; we have to give people hope. In terms of government, in terms of society, that's our goal. You can't have a group of people that don't dream, that see themselves as dead or in jail.”

“Growing up, my dad and my mom were there for my sister and I.”

“We were raised in the black community not to trust the police, and I believe, in the white community, they were raised to actually be a policeman.”

“I love Tom Cruise. I've been a Tom Cruise fan for a long time.”

“I didn't know anything about acting at all. I was completely green. I got into it to meet people, to try and figure out what I wanted to do.”

“The life of an editor is not a glamorous one. You're a fixer; you make things better.”

“It's one of the roles of a lifetime to be able to play someone like Mr. Cochran who was so influential. People knew about his work in regard to police brutality. He was very much a staple in the community - someone who, if there was trouble, people knew, 'Go get Johnnie Cochran.'”

“When I was a senior in high school, I did an internship with a law firm. And it was very clear that I did not have what it took to do that kind of work.”

“When actors have the opportunity to play a larger-than-life icon - my wife did it with Tina Turner, and Jamie Foxx did it with Ray Charles - you have to make a decision how you go in. What do you start with? Where do you begin?”

“I remember I was up for the role of Jim in 'Huck Finn,' and because I went to Harvard and Yale, they didn't think I would be able to play a slave. I said, 'Oh, please.' I had to go in there and prove to them that I wasn't too intelligent to play a slave.”

“It goes back in the black community that the police are not your friends. That's an old, old, deep understanding that we have, that it's going to take a lot to undo that in our minds.”

“I've done a lot of movies, but my favorite was 'Blind Faith.'”

“There's a lot going on in the Bassett-Vance household, a lot of balls in the air.”