Larenz Tate

“I approach film no differently than I approach a role. I want to make sure the movie is right, the characters are right, I can really bring something to it as a visionary, a storyteller. It's great to point a camera, but can you tell a story?”

“What I look for in a script is the plot point and whether they're strong, obviously, or not, whether the characters are rich or not, and if I can do justice to the character or not. Some movies you look at and the script is so bad that no one can do anything with the script.”

“'Crash' is a movie about the racial tension that still exists in America. A lot of us pretend that we don't have preconceived notions and stereotypical ideals about each other, but we do. And we wanted to create a movie about people whose lives crash into each others' accidentally.”

“'Scarface,' I remember going to see that with my father. We didn't know what to expect; we did not know what to expect. I was a kid, and my father took me, and we didn't leave. It was so disturbing, but we loved it.”

“I'm looking to produce more stuff: TV shows, commercials, music videos and short films. I'm building my catalog so I can have some fun in between the times that I get to a movie.”

“How did I go from 'Menace II Society' to 'Love Jones?' There wasn't a poetic moment or romantic bone in O-Dog's body.”

“It's actually kind of cool that women have taken to me. Because now I have a whole different demographic when it comes to the audiences. I have women who come out and support my movies, and that is a huge demographic for me, which is great because some actors don't have a female base at all.”

“Just watching TV as a kid, for a long time I thought, as a young kid, obviously when I was, like, 4 or 5, I thought that people lived in the television.”

“I like the action business. I like the action movies. I guess Hollywood wants to see me do action. So I am down. I like it.”

“As an actor, you always want to find a piece of who you are in every role you take on.”

“Fortunately, I grew up in a family that was grounded. My mother and father knew how to guide my career and look out for my best interests.”

“'Menace II Society' itself was a groundbreaking film. It's definitely going to go in the vaults of classics in all of cinema. The Hughes Brothers created an incredible project. Just gave the world something a little different than what we had seen in previous films in that same genre.”

“When I was younger, I didn't have the finer things in life. It was around me - the cars, the jewelry and all of that. But I didn't have it. So I did bad things to get what I wanted. Going to jail never crossed my mind. I wish it had. When I was locked up, my mother didn't support me because she couldn't accept who I was and where I was.”