Utkarsh Ambudkar Quotes

All of us are so mixed. My great-grandfather was white.

When I was growing up, anyone who wasn't white was black. It meant all of us. Though when I was at university, we started to be called Asians.

We always talk about how important representation is. It's so important to see someone that looks like you - whether you're African American, Asian, Indian or whatever your background is - doing incredible things. It's just motivation to go out there and do incredible things yourself.

I grew up figure skating, and in figure skating there is only a handful of black people at the time figure skating with me.

I went to a private girls' school where I was one out of five girls in the class who looked like me.

If you're a white kid growing up and you see a Black player and he's got the name of your college or your town across his chest, that means something.

There are little Indian girls out there who look up to me, and I never want to belittle the honor of being an inspiration to them. But while I’m talking about why I’m so different, white male show runners get to talk about their art.

The first time someone called me a role model, I remember thinking, 'What does that mean?' But I feel aware of it when I'm reading scripts.

Sometimes my ethnicity is relevant, other times not. I definitely get the best of both worlds.

I wasn't cocky, just confident; I went to an all black school, a white kid.

There was a point - when I was a kid - where I said I wanted to be like Luke Skywalker, with blond hair and blue eyes. My mom right there told me to never be ashamed of who I am.

The girl next door isn't necessarily blonde and blue-eyed anymore. So I don't feel like I need to morph into that all-American thing.

My view of myself doesn't change. I know who I am. I'm Cuban American; both my parents are Cuban - one was a little browner than the other one. That's who I am. I feel sorry that it's taken so long for the film industry to figure it out and to catch up.

I always identified myself as non-Swedish. I was never discriminated against, because I looked Swedish and speak without an accent. But I had an outsider's perspective.

For some reason the football coach of a major college program is seen as one of the leaders of the campus. And some way we have to let our young people know that that leader can look like anyone.

The race is your face. Obviously, I come from a mixed background. Who I am and how I look and being black.

The way I see it is that all the ol' guff about being Irish is a kind of nonsense. I mean, I couldn't be anything else no matter what I tried to be. I couldn't be Chinese or Japanese.

I'm an actor, full stop. Not an Arab actor. Not an actor of Algerian origin. Just an actor.

I have always been very good at being able to structure my time. My mother had a huge influence on me. My dad was my coach. He was a hugely influential figure.

When I grew up, I never saw anyone looking like me on TV, you know? I'm so glad to see a lot more of us on television, whether it's Mindy Kaling or it's Irrfan Khan or Freida Pinto. You know, I hope, like, little girls across the world can just look at me and say, 'Ah, I want to be that!' Indian or not, it shouldn't matter.

The Asian-American kids I meet respond to a democracy in the vulgarity of my roles.

When I was15 years old, I couldn't look at the NFL and look on TV and say, 'Boy, there's a head coach, African American. That's something I'd like to do.'

When I was in school, you never saw anyone who looked like us that was on TV. And that was really weird for me because there's so many people of South Asian descent in America - in the world.

It's hard as a young person of a different ethnicity or background to look at the TV and not see anyone who looks like you. Representation is very important.

I had no role models from my own community - there was no such thing. Earlier on, there were people like Dolores Del Rio, but I was too young for that - that was before me. There was really nobody out there.