Quotes from Chadwick Boseman

As a director, it is important to understand the actor's process.

I remember my first agent telling me - because they found me as an actor, but I was probably more interested in writing and maybe directing - they were like, 'Well, you can't do both things.' And I was like, 'I'm gonna show you.'

When you play characters, you shouldn't just be putting on their characteristics - you should be finding it inside yourself.

I'd taken, like, maybe some African dance classes a couple of times, but I wasn't a musical theater person at all.

I thought I would draw or paint or be an architect. I was always drawing portraits. My mom put me in art classes in the summer.

The best advice about getting older? Just be thankful you're not dead!

I majored in directing. However, I did spend some time at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, so I am somewhat well-versed in African Studies.

When it comes down to it, I'd rather have an action figure than a Golden Globe.

People have said, 'You don't need to do any more biopics. You don't need to play any more real people.' I don't agree with that.

Each movie you do about a real person is like a painting, and you choose certain things in the painting that you want to pull out and you want to show.

I said yes too much. I said yes to certain projects that weren't for me. It was somebody else's vision and somebody else's dream and somebody else's artistic endeavor, but it didn't necessarily fit in my grand scheme.

I think there's a difference between a working actor, a movie star and a celebrity. They're all three different things.

I would go through these cycles of being really, really focused on work, and not being around anyone, to being around everyone. And that could be distracting. It was nothing or everything.

Nobody has to give me permission to write.

I started out as a writer and a director. I started acting because I wanted to know how to relate to the actors. When people ask me what I do, I don't really say that I'm an actor, because actors often wait for someone to give them roles.

It was a big thing for me to read black writers. 'Fences,' by August Wilson. James Baldwin's 'Amen Corner.' 'The Fire Next Time.' 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X,' of course.

There's nothing more stressful than your stomach growling. But interestingly enough, some of my best writing came when I was poor and hungry - living off water and oatmeal, mind clear.

I would love to play Jimi Hendrix.

The industry looks for white actors and actresses, but it's not the same for black actors. We have to really put the work in.

Actors can have a fair amount of hate for each other, so when another actor says, 'You did your thing,' or 'That was inspiring,' you can't really ask for more than that.

Every year, Hollywood is looking for that new, white leading man and new white starlet that audiences fall in love with. But they're not looking for the next Denzel Washington, Will Smith or Sidney Poitier.

I have my own personal masticating juicer at home. I sort of picked it up from friends a few years ago, and it just gives me more energy. Mostly green juice. Spinach, celery, kale, green apples, lemon, sometimes ginger - you know, like, nasty, euuugghhhh!

Baseball players need strength but also the ability to make fast-paced, explosive movements, so their training is all about strengthening the tendons around the bone and the joint so you don't tear the muscles from the bones.

Sometimes when you're acting, you only need a little bit of something to sort of channel or, you know, transport into a place.