A biography for Daniel Kaluuyahasn’t been written yet.
“'Sucker Punch' was so demanding, it scared me a bit.”
“I find it hard to watch a lot of the kind of things I'm doing before doing it. I don't think it's helpful for me. It makes me too aware.”
“I didn't take writing seriously at first - I didn't think I could do it. When I did, I fell in love with it. But writing is very lonely.”
“I don't think you become a name with just one job.”
“'Sicario' was a lot of improvisation.”
“I did a play, back in the day, called 'Sucker Punch,' and it meant so much for me. I was 21. And I went, 'I just want to do work like that.' Stuff I believe in. And when I have compromised, I've never really felt good about it.”
“My experience growing up in London and growing up in a working class background is that when people are down and out, that's when they're probably the funniest. They have to be. That's what they do to cope, to find joy, 'cause they don't feel the joy inside. Or they use humor to keep people out.”
“What you want to do is make people talk, start a conversation.”
“I feel like racism's more pronounced in America.”
“I wrote my first play when I was nine. It was performed at Hampstead Theatre.”
“Life ain't a drama. And life isn't just a comedy. Life is sometimes horrifying. Life is science-fiction. There are all elements and faculties that we navigate, so I just expect a script to reflect that. As long as it's truthful. I think genre-bending is just being honest.”
“I've been to so many parties in England and in America that's exactly like that, where you're kind of, like, seen as Other. When you're just living your life, and you have to adopt the Other in order to understand and navigate the society.”
“The beauty of any artwork is that it becomes the person that's watching it: What do you take out of it?”
“Racism is like a horror movie. Black kids die because of racism. I don't know what's more horrifying than that.”
“When work ends, I'd rather just be seen as Daniel - normal.”
“When I need a reality check, I call my mum.”
“I know what it means to be stopped by police. I've been stopped by police a lot.”
“Really, I have no idea how I'm perceived in the industry.”
“There's a lot of black men running around with crazy trauma scars, and they should be going to therapy. They should be sitting down and talking to people. But they can't. If you've got the armor of being a man, and the armor of being a black man, that hyper-masculine thing can make those scars deeper.”
“Having something that makes money changes everything. I'm from England, and it's very much about credibility there. And yeah, it is about that. But the money can change things. And so you understand it's a business.”