Joe Morton Quotes

I've been fortunate in my career, but, yes, there have been many times when I have been told my audition has been cancelled because they're only going to see white people.

The industry looks for white actors and actresses, but it's not the same for black actors. We have to really put the work in.

A lot of things that I can't get into the room for, even just to be seen, is because they're just saying 'No. they're not casting non-white.' You're lumped into a category with people who are just not white.

If you're African American, you are forced into making different choices, in a lot of cases, than you are as a white person.

Even in today's opera world, the position of the black tenor is problematic.

If I were white, I'd get less criticism.

Every year, Hollywood is looking for that new, white leading man and new white starlet that audiences fall in love with. But they're not looking for the next Denzel Washington, Will Smith or Sidney Poitier.

I go to castings and see several black and Asian girls, then I get to the show and look around there's just me and maybe one other coloured face.

Are there differences between black actors' opportunities and white actors' opportunities? Yes, there are. It's been said.

I have the strangest time to get cast in anything. 'Ghost' was the same thing. Six months I had to wait for them to decide they had seen everybody possible. Why not? What limits me? I'm black? Oh, am I black?

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.

It is not easy to get parts in mainstream films for most people of color. Hollywood and British writers are not writing parts for us, or the directors are not interested in casting us in parts that are color-blind.

What's hardest for me to swallow is when there is a love story, say, with a really high-profile male star and there's no reason I can't play the part. They say, 'Oh, we love Halle, we just don't want to go black with this part.'

I'd go for roles that would say 'for all ethnicities,' but what they're pretty much saying is, 'We want a Caucasian guy or a black guy.' One or the other.

It is frustrating to be a Black woman in the entertainment industry.

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others. Black America ever lives under that skeptical eye.

I agree that lighter-skinned women get favored in Hollywood, and I'm not proud to say that.

If I had been white with the things I did, they never would have allowed me to get out of baseball.

Let's face it: there's still a certain amount of racism in human beings, so that shows up in Hollywood.

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.

As a white fighter, you get twice as much criticism.

Remember, MTV would only show white videos for a long time. Can you imagine that? That was the '80s when that happened. It's hard to even think of that now, you know?

The thing about being black in a mostly white industry, particularly as a black male, is you can't lose your temper in the same way. Essentially, you are an angry black man losing his temper in a way that's unprofessional, as opposed to an industry that has protected unprofessional white males in perpetua.

Let's put the cards on the table. Real is real. If I was a different complexion, I think people and fans would treat me a different way.

I can identify many different experiences that I've had over the course of my life and things that I've witnessed where it seemed that black men, specifically me or someone else may have got the, you know, different treatment than somebody else would in that same situation.