I wanted something where I could have the clearest and most unfiltered artistic and creative voice.

I wanted to be a leading man - the black lawyer, the black doctor, the black policeman.

I never wanted to lose out on an acting job and wonder if I hadn't been trained enough.

Every little kid has always wanted to be a race car driver. This gets some of that out.

When I was a kid, I wanted to walk with my dad's limp - my dad was my hero - but that infuriated him, and he would make me walk back and forth in the living room until I walked without it.

My grandmother was born in 1900, and she would regale me with tales I call 'Little House on the Prairie' tales, but they were tales of segregated and racist America growing up in Alabama and Mississippi, where she came from.