Giancarlo Esposito

“I never like to refer back to anything I've done when I'm working on a character, even if that character has the same occupation.”

“Yoga is a big part of my life now. There's not a day that goes by where I don't do an Asana and meditation practice.”

“When you're with another actor and doing something very intense, often you pull them over to your side, or they pull you over to theirs. But if you stay in your own truth, you can play that perfect tennis match. I always want to bring my power, but not in a way that eliminates the whole game!”

“I came from a divorced mother and father, obviously mixed race.”

“I do play villains.”

“There is a price to pay for most of our actions. For every action, there is a reaction.”

“I believe acting is very physical, and when you have to fight or do those kinds of things, it takes a lot of respect not to allow yourself to go off and hurt yourself or someone else.”

“I'm a big fan of period pieces, and I'm a big fan of the old-time westerns.”

“I know from teaching that actors want to act. Even the subtlest actors can do a little too much.”

“To be a character actor is to be open, to be a chameleon.”

“For me, I've lived a life as an athlete.”

“I often think about, 'How do we return to a simpler way of living? Is there some way that we can start to think of each other as human beings again, instead of worshiping money, instead of worshiping electronics, instead of worshiping getting ahead just for me?'”

“I try to be careful with my persuasiveness. When my heart is really behind it, and when I have no ulterior motive, then I know I'm truly persuasive.”

“The more I get connected to my own breath and my own yogic experience and my own prayer and my own idea, the ideas that have existed for so long - that we all belong to each other and we could live a deeper spiritual existence - the more I get connected to that, the more I shun this world.”

“I feel that sometimes, holding yourself as black, saying that is your sole identity, can sometimes stand in your way of being a member of the humanity of man, being a member of the family of the divine.”

“People who have not done their research on me do not know that I am European, born in Copenhagen, Denmark to an Italian father from Napoli and a mother from Alabama who was singing opera and went to Europe, met my dad, fell in love, and then moved back to Rome, where I was raised, between Rome and Hamburg.”

“When you're speaking Spanish, you're thinking in a different way.”

“I want a body of work; I want a good story after a good story.”

“Middle-class people are becoming desperate. It can cause a moral man to break bad.”

“When I perform on stage, you have to remember my performance or buy another ticket to the party! In television and film, you can see it over and over again.”