Quotes About Identity

I used to sign vouchers and sign-out sheets with 'Alexandra Dee.'

Singing and acting suit me. I made a vow to myself to do everything that I can do with this life that I have, and I have to find the time to do this. Sometimes I need to be an actress. Sometimes I don't need to be Jill. However, everyone is always looking for the Jill in everything.

I made a vow that I wouldn't be tempted by what could happen to me if I went to Europe. I thought, 'You could be absorbed in it - it's so seductive, you might lose your own search for identity.' Then, when I did finally go to Europe, I was able to resist it because I had established my own identity.

Four hours of prosthetics every morning, the jowls and the nose, and it was very hot so they're having to attend to it all day, and you're still petrified of so many things, such as, can I speak properly? Hitchcock never quite lost those East End vowels, even though he had the softened California consonants.

My family is from Liverpool, so I have some of those vowel sounds, I've got the slack tone of someone from Birmingham, and then I was raised in Bedford, which is just north of London. So my accent, if it's possible, makes even less sense to a Brit than to an American.

Obama's middle name differs from my last name by only two vowels. Does the McCain-Palin campaign view me as a pariah, too? Do McCain and Palin think there's something wrong with my name?

I felt so out of place at the Miss India pageant. I had just come back from America, and I was told I needed to lose my American accent and learn the Queen's English, so I had to enunciate my vowels and speak well and eloquently. Giving up a New York accent is pretty hard.

The fact that I am Latino is not a secret. There's not much I can do about that. It is what it is. I think people know that my last name ends in a vowel. What can I tell you?

The only vowel I'm concerned with is 'I.'

No one anticipates divorce when they're exchanging vows, and it can be devastating emotionally and financially. To ease the financial side of the blow, you need to maintain your financial identity in your relationship. That means having your own credit history - you need your own credit card - and your own savings and retirement accounts.

I am neither a homosexual nor a eunuch, nor have I ever taken any vows of chastity.

There's really one character for every actor. The voyage is to find that one character.

I don't call myself a writer, much as I'd love to be. An author, maybe - the novel 'Voyage' made $870,000. Writer, no. Nor am I an actor. I was never on the stage.

The capacity to be intrinsic and vulgar is American.

As a little girl in the '50s, I couldn't wear a purple-and-white flowered skirt with a red blouse - those colors were too loud. My parents were not into that 'We are Negros that wear all beige,' but there was a line you could walk over that could signal vulgar, crass, rather than clever use of color. And that outfit crossed over the line.

As a drag performer, people have traditionally put us into the category of 'pervert' or 'deviant' or things like that. So I've always been really careful not to be vulgar or grotesque with sexuality.

I am a character actor and one of my characters just happens to be a loud, vulgar woman.

The Asian-American kids I meet respond to a democracy in the vulgarity of my roles.

Clothing reveals what a character is trying to project as well as what they're giving away about themselves without even realizing it: their socioeconomic class; their confidence level; their vulnerabilities.

Acting has always been a way for me to express myself, and show all my vulnerabilities and flaws through my characters.

Vulnerability is the strongest state to be in. How boring would it be if we were constantly dominant or constantly submissive?

For me, the best way to be as an artist is to be completely yourself, letting that vulnerability come through.

Vulnerability is tough, especially being a man.

For modelling, you have to be such a strong person in a way - or seen to be a strong person, do you know what I mean? But in acting you have to get in touch with all the vulnerability that you carry.