Michael Jai White Quotes

If there are older black people in the audience that I can see I will not say the n-word. I know they grew up with a different meaning.

I don't want to just fall back on the fact that I was on the cover of 'GQ' for being an actor.

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with a reputation of being an action guy. That's something I probably try to avoid, but I seem to keep making action movies.

I did a couple comedies to balance myself as an actor and balance how audiences see Donnie Yen as an actor, and I would even say as a celebrity or icon, to some fans. I want to show that I'm not Terminator.

You have to remember that in the microcosm of Cincinnati, Ohio, through northern Kentucky, my father was a big star, still is. So that made my sister and me really visible. Everybody knew us, talked about us.

People know me as Prakash Rai in Karnataka. Let it be so. But I'm known as Prakash Raj to the rest of India and abroad. Every actor worth his salt gets a name after coming to films.

I want to be the physical embodiment of light, you know? And I feel like now people know, when they see the lights go off and this light-up figure appear on stage, they know that's Mustafa Ali.

My experiences with the older audience and, selectively, the people I hang out with or run into, they all want to see Arnold [Schwarzenegger] kick some ass.

It's really great that people are seeing me as a credible person. That alone is great. And the fact that people make fan accounts for me and recognize me now sometimes is really strange and cool.

The first thing my agent told me in 1959 was he said you have to have something recognizable that people will remember. “What are you? Do you have cleft in your chin? You have a Jimmy Stewart kind of talk?” And I thought I don’t know what I can give them that will be different.

"Smooth Sailing" and "Hall of Fame" are my top two nicknames. "Cool Guy." "Jolly Jon." "Fun Jon." There's a lot of derivatives of Jon. "Cool Jon." Some people took "Smooth Sailing" and "Fun Jon" and made "Smooth Jon." That's a good one. It's just starting to catch on with the general public. Just every now and then, "Hey! Smooth Jon!" Or "You're Smooth Jon, right?!" People aren't quite sure. I'm like, "Yeah." "Okay, cool, that's what I thought!"

I'm trying to work out a way to be a singer and to create cool content. I'm willing to do that as an entertainer. But I'm not willing to give up my actual self. And the way the system is built up, there'll be a backlash soon. Just recently some people published 11 photos of Sia's face. It's a bummer for me because it's going to elevate my profile and make me more recognizable. But I don't look the same as I did when I used to have my photo taken. Music is for your ears, not your eyes, right? But film is for your eyes, and I would like to give you something.

If you get your face and your name out there enough, people will start to recognize you.

Black culture is very difficult to explain to people who don't have any direct contact with it.

I didn't want to take the typical action roles that everybody was expecting me to take, because I was going to get typecast as that guy, the action guy who didn't have anything really bright to say and who just kicked in doors and punched people in the face and shot people and drove off in a cool car. I didn't want to be that guy.

I love going to all kinds of movies, I screen DVDs in my house, but I go to the theatre a lot in the afternoon. I don't get bugged because there aren't many people around.

I'm the same on stage as I am off stage. A lot of people who I admire - Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne - are not that different either. You hope that if you met them that they'd be as nice and well-rounded as they appear.

My theory is that when you're famous, you're no different from anybody else - it's just that more people know your name.

I'm not a huge social media kind of guy, so I don't really know, I don't really ever get... at least in real life, I really don't get recognized. I think people seem to find it very difficult to connect me to characters I've played.

It wasn't until The Sixth Sense that people started saying, wow, man, you're an actor. People didn't think of me as the guy in a band anymore.

Generally speaking, people who know me will tell you that my public persona is not that different from my private persona.

I often stand by the merchandise booth, point to a poster and tell people, 'That's me.'

I think 40 years ago, it would have been a little bit different because people had a tendency to think the actor was their part. I do find people who, all of a sudden, realize who is sitting in the restaurant and the first thing they react on is not necessarily, "There's that actor," but it's, "There's that killer guy."

If you're different somehow and have made yourself unique, people will find you and pay you more.

If you don’t tell people about your success, they probably won’t know about it.