Carmen Ejogo Quotes & Sayings

“I really feel that I had a genuinely diverse, multicultural upbringing, and I just don't find New York to be quite as diverse. Maybe I'm romanticising, but I feel that I was exposed to a real melting pot in terms of culture and pop culture. My kids are essentially middle-class, but I do try to remind them that they come from humble beginnings.”

“I make a really delicious eggplant and squash curry that's inspired by Vij of Vij's Restaurant, a great chef and restaurateur in Vancouver. I like to cook that dish because it's really simple, but the flavor is so pungent and intense that I feel like I'm a real chef whenever I create it.”

“Any good director, and I've worked with a few that I would call very good, they know how to disarm any anxieties very quickly.”

“I was a big fan of John Cassavetes, his wife, Gena Rowlands, and that era of filmmaking which was about realism and which represented the antithesis of the dreamy escapism you found in musicals.”

“I was this very precocious kid with a big personality. When my mother saw that modelling was something I enjoyed, she didn't dissuade me.”

“You have to be willing to be afraid if you're going to be an artist.”

“Great artists are the ones who have put their entire selves out there to be adored, humiliated, to be picked at, cherished, all of those things, and haven't shied away from that.”

“Growing up in London, with a hippie mom, I don't know that I'm most people's definition of what a black person is. I'm mixed, yes, but in the world I'm defined as black before I'm defined white. I've never been called white.”

“I dabbled a little bit in the whole music thing but I've always thought about Bernie Taupin, who is Elton John's lyricist; Elton John is the great melody and song writer but Bernie Taupin is the one who writes all the lyrics. I don't write lyrics, and I never wanted to be in the music business if I was just going to be a puppet in it.”

“I can remember being very keen to go to drama school at the age of eight, and practising ballet in my bedroom to Queen soundtracks.”