Jenna Wortham Quotes

Our family were outsiders, and I've always had a sense of the outsider, the underdog, and a strong sense of justice towards people who are excluded.

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.

You heard on all sides that the brightest Jewish children were turned down if the examining officers did not like the turn of their noses.

I was more or less a carnival attraction. I was a freak show.

I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.

If I feel any marginalisation, it's because the things that concern me aren't so important to other people.

In the past when I was in Hollywood, I was like a dog. I felt humiliated. My English was not good. People would even ask me 'Jackie Who?'.

I usually play disenfranchised youth.

All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land.

Like one of any minority, I have experienced prejudice.

An agent said he didn't know what to do with me, I wouldn't be able to play any parts but lesbians and aliens.

Kids hate anyone who is different.

You have stripped from me the rank and privileges of the professorship and the doctoral degree which I earned, and you have set me at the level of the lowest criminal.

I was always the only black in the movie theater, the only black in class, the only black in the library, the only black in the discotheque. I always felt observed and judged.

For some reason, they always gave me a fat suit in high-school productions. If there was a character who needed to be robust, they gave me a fat suit, and I put on a silly voice.

Society as a whole had sentenced me to a life of humiliation for the sole reason that I was not white.

I do not want to name any individual names, but I felt like when I was working in Hollywood, there were some fellow colleagues of mine who didn't even look me in the eyes because I was Asian.

Without mentioning any names, there was a film that was being done, and I ran into the producer on the plane. It was a book that I really, really loved, and I said, 'I'd love to be a part of this.' And they made it clear that that was not going to be possible - for no particular reason other than that there was just no part for a black person.

I've experienced a great deal of, you know, ostracism from the making of films.

In the last 'Batman' movie, they told me that I couldn't get an audition for a small role they were casting because they weren't 'going urban.' It was like, 'What does that have to do with anything?'

I'm Asian, so they assumed I'm not an American and that I come from Japan. Restaurants would refuse to serve me, and places would refuse to give you a haircut.

I can't tell you how disheartening it is to be told to go home because the director is filming you from behind and you don't have the right kind of body. As an actress, to be told that... Well, it's just a very odd set of circumstances.

I've become accustomed to not being cast for television and film because of how I look.

I was taunted because I was different.

I hate parameters. They immediately alienate a bunch of people.