Quotes from Omari Hardwick

You know how you can be romantic? You can be romantic by going to a beautiful setting, sitting on a park bench, and getting good ole-fashioned golden arches, a.k.a. McDonald's. That's probably the best I can do romantically.

You don't go to church and tell the choir how to sing if you're a visitor.

I was a 200-pound defensive back on Saturday, but after the season, I was performing 'Lysistrata' or 'Fences.'

I don't make a big deal out of playing football at UGA to people who have interviewed me.

You can't look at the dollar and say, 'I'm not what I dreamed of being unless I do this type of movie and it's a blockbuster that gives me this amount of dollars.' That's not good.

Poetry has, in a way, been my bridge to my acting career.

I think the universe just brings people around others they find to be interesting.

I think Gil Scott-Heron is a king. He's a brilliant, broken king.

I'd done 'Peter Pan' in a little pre-K class or whatever.

If you remain open to great directors who look like you, who know what they're doing and are making impactful films that are destroying these 'blockbuster films,' you can do okay, and everybody can get more of a piece of the pie. But you've got to be open and brave.

As a poet, I would always hear emcees come up to me and say, 'Yo, you should rap,' and I was like, 'No.' You know, the label was tough for me. I'm a poet. I was proud of that distinction between the two, not wanting to be the other.

I was at UGA playing with Champ Bailey and Hines Ward - both guys who will probably touch the Hall of Fame one day.

I always go into a character thinking, 'If it scares me, I can do it.'

I've been described as a smart actor because I've attended college. Or I've been called an artsy jock. And I am thinking, 'So, are actors supposed to be dumb?'

I did 'Fences' off-broadway at the Beacon Theater, so it's amazing that Denzel Washington and Viola Davis brought it to Broadway.

Sometimes my schedule doesn't allow time to go to the hotel after I get off the plane, so I bring my Freebird boots or my old school Adidas shell-toes to throw on after I land.

As an actor, I come to set, and I have already broken the character down by writing a poem about the character. I try to write in his voice, the way he would write it.

I've approached every character I've ever played with a poem, first and foremost.

I found poetry at 12 and 13 and, lo and behold, learned that my attorney father had a background in poetry - as he wore dashikis and Afros in the '70s and named his kids Arabic names. He was a poet and a lot like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron and all of these folks. He definitely was an artist.

The reality is our story and the way we love and our taste in clothing and everything else. And what we ambitiously feel we can be.

I realized, 'Oh, it's easier to get what I want if I embrace the sex symbol thing.' Microphones are more in my face, and I can say things about the kids that I mentor and open more access to more doors.

On 'Being Mary Jane,' I learned to embrace sex symbol.

For me, music was a cathartic way to free me from the nut of Ghost. After working on set for 'Power' for 14 hours, it allowed me to pour my sanity and insanity into the music.

Playing a cop goes a long way. I have a lot of friends who are working as actors, and as soon as I started playing military characters or cops, and not the actual criminal that we're chasing on this show, they all said, 'You actually can have a career now.'