Zazie Beetz

“I used to work at Cafe Mogador in the East Village. I love Mogador, but I feel like working almost anywhere will kind of ruin it for you. There was a lot of panicking while being a waitress there. I don't like to think about that. But I love the food.”

“For me, a big thing growing up was naturalness - both in being and appearance. My mom never let me relax my natural hair. For so long, I thought I was ugly, and I still sometimes struggle with that. But now I've come to feel like this is me.”

“I wish I was a morning person.”

“I don't know how people say exercising is addictive.”

“I always thought my alternative life, if I wasn't acting, would be to become a midwife. I love women. I want to help them exist.”

“Walking in the street, particularly in a city like New York, every single day, I am reminded of how objectified women can be. Being catcalled every day, multiple times a day, all the time... it just constantly happens.”

“When the Berlin Wall came down, my dad left to visit the U.S. He met my mom at this summer camp where they were both working, so I grew up between Washington Heights and Germany speaking two languages.”

“I love babies. I also have this very deep desire to become a mother. I always thought that motherhood was my highest calling.”

“I feel like, every six months, I learn my hair or my skin anew and find a new thing that I like to do, and then I abandon it and move on.”

“I've begun feeling that my responsibility is to the Earth. Our generation's war is climate change, so I've really been modifying how I eat and what I eat.”

“The version of me on the Internet, it's not me. It's one portion.”

“It's fascinating working with young children. You have to improvise around them, and they're moving around and doing stuff, and you have to be real with them.”

“The truth is all kinds of people exist everywhere. So let's tell their stories, too.”

“Some people feel like women should dress in a way that doesn't promote attention-seeking. But this is just my body. My body in itself isn't only sexual.”

“Agriculture is one of the biggest causes of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Cars? Planes? Trains? Nope. Cow farts.”

“Growing up, my aunts would always put in hair ties and bows and all kinds of stuff, and I always hated it.”

“I was an only child until I was 15, so I was able to reap the benefit of that.”

“For me, fear manifests itself in snoozing and inactivity. I just become so sleepy, any time of day, when something needs to be done. I sometimes go days without responding to texts or reading books or being able to process much of anything beyond the sun slowly creeping through my living room windows.”

“I like representing different kinds of black people - showing they exist.”

“I remind myself that, though there was a time anxiety might have stopped me, today is not that day. And so, by checking in with myself, minute by minute, I push myself through.”