TEYONAH PARRIS

Whatever it is you do, study it, learn the ins and outs of it, and really work on building your craft.

When they asked, 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' I said, 'I want to be a model and an actress.' They said, 'Why?' I said, 'Because I can look good and get paid to do it.' That's the kind of kid I was.

You have to be resilient to be a black person in America. The thing about being resilient is being able to fall apart and pick yourself up again. And putting yourself back together, that improves on what you were before.

I've wanted to be an actress my whole life, and the - none of the women I aspired to be like had natural hair.

It's important, as a young person of color, to see yourself reflected in the media.

When I look at material, I get excited by things that are telling the truth because that's what you want to do: tell somebody else's truth.

It feels good to be a role model for little girls who don't often see natural hair on the red carpet.

It's so important... to have a variety of representation on television.

I always want to tell the truth. It doesn't have to be a pretty truth, and it doesn't have to be a life-changing and life-threatening truth like 'Chi-Raq.' But I want to tell someone's truth in an effort to inspire people to see themselves reflected on the screen.

When you get older, you start to doubt, and you put limitations on yourself. But little Teyonah had no fear.

I love period dramas.

I'm looking through old things of mine, and there was this binder from when I was 14 years old. It is essentially a dream board. It is a school binder that I had put magazine clippings on. It said, 'TV actress, fame, a picture of Halle Berry, a picture of Christina Aguilera.' I was obsessed with both of them.

I'm influenced by many things. Simply turning on the television, I feel inundated with images and messages to be a certain way. So I try to limit my influences by being aware of what I allow into my environment. I'm always conscious of what's trying to creep into my subconscious.

As a girl, I remember looking up to pop singers, and they all had long, straight weaves and light skin. And I thought, 'That's what I have to look like if I'm going to be fierce and sexy and all those things.'

In my junior year of high school, I went to a boarding school for the arts: a school called the Governor's School for The Arts and Humanities. It was basically a mini-Juilliard - an intense training conservatory for the arts.

My dad, bless his heart, always told me I was beautiful, so I was never self-conscious in that way. But when you look at the images on TV, you think you need to look like that in order to be sexy.

I don't even watch basketball. I can't even pretend.

I'm like any other girl: I see the Instagram posts and the Tumblr stuff. I'm inspired by what my fellow girls are doing.

I went to this arts high school in Greenville, S.C. In speech class, the teacher, a white man, would say, 'You're talking ghetto. Don't talk ghetto.' I'm not only offended, but I'm confused because while there's nothing wrong with people who come from the projects or the ghetto, that's actually not my experience.

When I looked at 'Dear White People,' you have four African-American students who are all very different and who are trying to figure out who they are. They're dealing with identity issues and crises. That is exciting to me, to see African-American young people on a page, on a screen, who are so diverse and whose stories are all so different.

I think, no matter who you are, at some point in your life you've probably said, 'OK, well, who am I, and where do I fit in?'

In working with Nick Cannon, he's such a generous guy, a generous actor, and he was very protective.

Why aren't there films being made that tell ethnically diverse stories? Or why is it so impossible to allow a person of color to add their texture and their essence to a role that is not ethnically specific? I don't know why it's a novel or risky idea to consider making a film look like how our world actually looks today.

I really feel like the stars have aligned many ways, many times for me. I have been blessed to play some awesome roles and nuanced and meaningful characters.

When you have filmmakers like Justin Simien, writers, producers, actresses like Lena Waithe, who are people of color, they're creating their own content and saying, 'You know what? We're not going to wait on someone else to tell our story. We're going to do it ourselves. You can be a part of it or not.'