Lorraine Toussaint

“I find I often do my best work when I'm not attached to the outcome of the audition.”

“Pretend and real are all real to a psychopath.”

“I am so proud of Amelia Boynton. I can burst with pride.”

“Sometimes the character will go into a completely different direction than I expected once the cameras start rolling. That's what I love about what I do.”

“We all have a dark side. Most of us go through life avoiding direct confrontation with that aspect of ourselves, which I call the shadow self. There's a reason why. It carries a great deal of energy.”

“I grew up under the British system, which I think is horrific for children - very, very strict - a system that did not recognize children as being individuals. You were small animals earning the right to be human.”

“I've become very fond of the law. I've always been an advocate for justice, which occasionally the law brings to light.”

“When you eliminate vanity from an art form, and I would think that this would be any art form, what is left is an opportunity to be incredibly naked and truthful.”

“We actors are superstitious creatures. We do all the homework, and we put all of the components together, but there's always one key aspect that we're not in charge of, really, and that's magic. You are always on the lookout for where and how that magic is going to ignite.”

“I hope that whenever my daughter has a negative experience, I'm there to talk about it and remind her how we feel when it's done to her so that she doesn't do it to others.”

“My job as an actor is to cover and expose in varying allowance that - so that the audience can peek through the window to the people I create.”

“I grew up a middle class, colonized child of teachers and librarians and people, women especially, who treasured education.”

“I was born odd. I was a strange child. My grandmother was always praying over me. She was always rubbing me and praying over me.”

“I love to see how a character unfolds off the page in a project. I don't always know how the character is going to turn out, even with the script being there. It's not always clear where that character is going to take me. Or where I will take them.”

“Once I'm on set, the only thing I'm really interested in is being in the room. Being present. And trusting that what I've done is sufficient, and I'm also trusting that I've also left room for magic.”

“'Body of Proof' was interesting because... I didn't feel I needed to prove anything in that audition. I didn't over-prepare it, but I was just very relaxed in it.”

“Anything you need, you can get on YouTube. It's wacky.”

“I meditate. I've been a meditator since, I think I was doing it unofficially before all my life and then began to formalize it somewhere around 14.”

“I know what it was like to not have a voice, so my daughter has a voice. I veto that voice when needed because at the end of the day I am the grown-up, but I hear her.”

“When you're playing a real character, you want to honor that person and receive inspiration from that person. They need to anoint you in some way that allows you to borrow just a small piece of their soul. That is the flame.”