Quotes from Ruth Negga

I work best when there's a safety trampoline of kindness.

I don't believe that directors need to essentially manipulate actors into doing things. You can suffer for your art, and you can make your own self suffer for your art. You don't need anyone else to do it for you. I work best when there's a safety trampoline of kindness.

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.

I grew up in an area of Ireland where there weren't many black or mixed-race children. But I never had any hassle; maybe I've blocked it out, but I don't think so.

I had a very peripatetic childhood, so I bounced around. Lived in Ethiopia until I was, like, three or four and then lived between Ireland and London.

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

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.

In many ways, playing a real person is slightly easier because you have a road map. When you're playing someone fictitious, there's myriad ways in. With a real person, there's boundaries, and that sometimes makes the work easier.

I was an attention seeker, always in trouble.

You don't come to see a Greek play and not want blood and gore and depth of feeling from your boots up.

Women always have to have this soft, maternal, sort of - I don't know - moral center.

I love the Greeks. There's no messing around - it's all do or die with them.

People ask me where I'm from. I say Ireland, and they are like 'Really? You don't look Irish.' Then you have to explain... people are intrigued, but sometimes you think, 'Why do I have to tell my whole story every time I open my mouth?

I think if we don't understand history, if we don't keep referring back to it, we become complacent. And complacency, as we all know, it leads to repeating history.

What I have wanted to do is take roles that are unexpected for people who look like me. Roles that the establishment would say, 'Oh, she couldn't possibly be that.'

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 think if you don't risk something in art, it's not really important.

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'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.

My family very much adored me, and at school, I was an object of fascination.

Bette Davis is my hero. I'm obsessed with her. I base everything I do on her.

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.

Violence in film and television is an ongoing conversation, and I like eavesdropping on it, but I'm never sure what my opinion is. I like watching creative violence, but I don't know.

I've met loads of black and brown and various people who are well into comics.

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.