The thing that surprised me the most is just how much money women that weren't rich were paying for their hair. When you're in a beauty parlor in Harlem next to abandoned buildings and somebody's paying five grand for a weave, that's a bit much.

I just thought everybody lived around abandoned buildings and crack-heads, ... I lived in the ghetto until I was like 19. I came to (Los Angeles), stayed at hotels and stuff. When I got back and I saw what my neighborhood looked like, I started getting scared.

Being with my kids is the best, most fun thing; it's a privilege.

It's like, hmm, there's people with $2000 weaves that could have bought health care with that weave money. They don't have insurance. People want what they want. And I guess that is a reason we have this big credit card problem and a lot of these foreclosures.

If you're an actor in your heart, no matter how much money they shove at you, it doesn't matter if the work doesn't provide that creative spark. You want out.

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were.