Quotes from Chiwetel Ejiofor

I think, as a younger actor, you are more open to the experience. And to an extent, you want to go into things blind and energised as if you were 15. Keep that terror.

I like to disappear into a role. I equate the success of it with a feeling of being chemically changed.

I didn't know anything about '12 Years a Slave.' Not the book, not Solomon Northup, which I was quite shocked by, once I'd read it, that it wasn't a seminal text. I think it deserves to be.

Depending on what your interest in theater is, I always recommend working on plays. It's a great way to be introduced to the field, and also a great way to be seen by agents and representation. I'm also a great advocate for studying acting at a drama school or a college.

I started, obviously, doing theater, and I always thought that I would; in a way, I always thought that I'd be a theater actor. When I was starting out, I didn't really plan on making films, actually.

Reporters tend to launch on what seems to be the clearest, most stark aspects of someone's life in terms of an interview.

We always want to live in an environment where there's no artificial block to good work.

I've always been a believer in research. It's great to have an instinctual human reaction to a character, too, of course, but it has to be countered with knowledge and understanding.

I was able to go on stage and work until it felt right or felt good. It meant that I very quickly realised that it was the job for me.

I'd never really considered film. If I'd thought about film more growing up, I probably would have changed my name. I had no concept of my name in lights.

It's a strange thing, but you get this click in your brain; the wonderful feeling that the entirety of a character is suddenly available and accessible to you.

The Second World War simplified things like race, and people came down on very clear lines.

Dividing everybody into genders and sexuality and races and religions, and I think it's important to have films out there, to have discussions out there which really try to get to grips with where that kind of thing can lead.

From deep in the slave hut is somebody calling over 150 years to all of our experiences and all of our ideas on human respect, and all of our ideas on dignity. And I felt like that's just incredibly powerful.

I was already devouring literature and I was the ripe old age of 15 when I decided to be an actor. I just thought plays were the most fantastic way of expressing life. I thought I'd discovered Shakespeare - 'hey, there's a new guy in town, don't know if anyone's read him.' I was just excited about the whole thing, from day one.

The inherited tradition is that we don't tell stories about slavery from the perspective of the slave. It's told through the president or the lawyer.

In England, there's no acknowledgement the invention of slavery came from Britain.

I was attracted to 'Half of a Yellow Sun' because of the story.

There's a catharsis in cutting down trees. But there's absolutely none of that in picking cotton. It's maddening! It's fiddly, and it pricks your fingers, and it's something that's a very hard skill if you have no alacrity for it.

I fell in love with film. I didn't start out to be a film actor. I wanted to be a theater actor.

I would love to be a fly on the wall watching other directors and actors to see what their process is like.

I feel that I don't have to wait around for good scripts anymore, that I can get things moving more quickly. I can ring up directors I like and say I'm keen to work with them, which is pretty great.

I became an actor by doing school plays and youth theaters, and then National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. And then I did study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. For me that was a good way to enter the field, to work in the theater.

The truth is, it's a totalitarian dictatorship when you're making films. You are the boss. You can listen to other people, and it can be a benevolent dictatorship, but it's a dictatorship nonetheless. A lot of directors go past their first experience, that's what they've come away with.