RUTH NEGGA

I am not hugely famous; I am not a name. For me, it's not the size of the role, it's the material and the people you are working with.

When you work with directors who really love actors, who love their contribution, it feels amazing. But sometimes when you work with directors, you feel like you're in the way.

I like connecting with people, and that's what good art is: a point of connection. There's nothing better, on stage or on film.

I grew up in an area of Ireland where there weren't many black or mixed-race children. But I never had any hassle; maybe I've blocked it out, but I don't think so.

I grew up in a lot of different places, so I pick up accents pretty quickly.

You don't come to see a Greek play and not want blood and gore and depth of feeling from your boots up.

I didn't become an actor to make money. And I didn't become an actor to be famous - though people always gasp if you say that, as if it's unfathomable that an actor doesn't want to be a star.

If people want to invade your privacy, they want to invade your privacy. I find it chilling, and I find it awful, and it makes me really nervous. It hasn't happened to me much, but when you have a taste of it, it's bitter.

I'm not in any rush to get anywhere. There's a pressure on actors to get somewhere before it's over. But everyone wants longevity, don't they? It's a career. Why be that flash-in-the-pan, taking every job out of worry it'll soon be over?

I know I've said it before in interviews, but the idea that all actors have their eye on some sort of prize - it being an Oscar, or fame, or whatever - not all actors I know are like that.

Violence in film and television is an ongoing conversation, and I like eavesdropping on it, but I'm never sure what my opinion is. I like watching creative violence, but I don't know.

I didn't have that many black people in my life, so I had to sort of search them out. And I didn't grow up in America, but I identified as much with their writing about the black experience as I did with their writing about the human experience.

We all have as much right to take up our space in the world as one another.

Some people say to me, 'You don't sound very Irish.' It's because I have this tendency to iron out my accent: not because I'm ashamed of it but because it makes my life easier if I don't keep having to repeat myself.

My whole life is an interracial relationship! It's inescapable. I am who I am.

I love the Greeks. There's no messing around - it's all do or die with them.

When you connect to someone on a human level, and you get to know about them, you can begin to love the things that make them different.

I've always been very talkative, very chatty, quite hyperactive. I grew up with a lot of cousins, and most of them were boys. Four in particular and I were the demolition squad. Havoc.

People have always made assumptions about me. I become very territorial about my identity because it's been hijacked by so many people with their own projections.

I trained, went to college, trained, and got a job. Then got another job. When I wasn't working I worked at a bar, then got another job.

When I was little, I thought that everyone wanted to hold me as a baby because I was this thing of fascination. But rather than this thing that wasn't quite right, I just felt that my difference was something that was probably very exotic.

America has a black president, but there are no black studio heads, and there just aren't that many black people working anywhere on film sets, let alone in positions of power in Hollywood. That's what needs to change.

I don't think I've necessarily been able to pick and choose in my career; I don't know how many people do. But I'll tell you what I've been able to do: I've been able to say no. It is the only thing you can hold on to sometimes, is that ability to say 'no.' And I think that in that way, you can create some kind of career.

I think it's a good thing for everybody that we see the entire world reflected back at us on our screens.

I'm all for philosophical debates about race, but if you look at history, you see that the status quo has power when it's unchallenged. So these conversations about inequality are crucial.