Ruth Negga

“I like connecting with people, and that's what good art is: a point of connection. There's nothing better, on stage or on film.”

“When I was a kid in Ireland, there were not very many black people. I was very much like the strange brown thing, intriguing and cute. I didn't experience racism there. The first time I did was in London. It was that moment that you realize you're black. A kind of lifting of the veil.”

“I don't think I've necessarily been able to pick and choose in my career; I don't know how many people do. But I'll tell you what I've been able to do: I've been able to say no. It is the only thing you can hold on to sometimes, is that ability to say 'no.' And I think that in that way, you can create some kind of career.”

“When you connect to someone on a human level, and you get to know about them, you can begin to love the things that make them different. That's when fear dissipates, and that's when we can live the life that we're all supposed to be living.”

“Ireland is home. And I'd love to move home. That's always been the plan.”

“I was an attention seeker, always in trouble.”

“The god of theater laughs in your face at planning. You can't plan as an actor; there's no way, because so much of it is dependent on other people's choices and decisions that you're at the whim of fate, really.”

“If people want to invade your privacy, they want to invade your privacy. I find it chilling, and I find it awful, and it makes me really nervous. It hasn't happened to me much, but when you have a taste of it, it's bitter.”

“I've always been very talkative, very chatty, quite hyperactive. I grew up with a lot of cousins, and most of them were boys. Four in particular and I were the demolition squad. Havoc.”

“People have these ideas about comic books and their adaptations as flashy and sort of surface-y, broad-strokes-type projects, but they're not, really.”

“I become very territorial about my identity because it's been hijacked by so many people with their own projections.”

“I am not hugely famous; I am not a name. For me, it's not the size of the role, it's the material and the people you are working with.”

“Often, it's easier to play someone further away from you because it's clearer who they are. I think if you want to make a performance authentic, there are a certain amount of leaps of faith into the unknown that you have to take. Otherwise, you're not really risking anything.”

“I had quite a scattered childhood. I was Irish in London, because I had my secondary school education there. I never really fitted anywhere. I didn't feel it was a negative thing, and I was never made to feel different - I just knew I was.”

“I didn't become an actor to make money. And I didn't become an actor to be famous - though people always gasp if you say that, as if it's unfathomable that an actor doesn't want to be a star.”

“Stories about race and identity pique my interest for obvious reasons. That's in my body, my brain, my history, my memories - it's all part of my toolbox as an actor.”

“I'm all for philosophical debates about race, but if you look at history, you see that the status quo has power when it's unchallenged. So these conversations about inequality are crucial.”

“We need to have a conversation about the fact that black faces are not as visible as they should be, that there is huge inequality everywhere in terms of race.”

“I use the term 'spine' for people when I think that they may seem on the surface sort of reticent, shy, self-deprecating, shying away from the spotlight. Quiet.”

“I'm interested in the idea that we all start off as these lovely little babies with all this potential but that circumstances mean that we don't always live the life we should.”