Quotes

It's wonderful to do these great blockbusters and bigger pictures, but my heart is always with true stories.

I'm very much the type of actor that once I embody the character, I could stay in it from the beginning to the end.

David Ayer is known for being a very serious filmmaker, but he has a very great sense of humor.

With any character I do, I do my due diligence with research.

I think the most appealing characters for the audience are the ones that you never know whether to root for them or whether to hate them. That's what keeps people drawn to their television sets.

I'm here to play certain characters and give them a voice that they might not have had. That's my job, and like it or not, that's what I'm here to do.

I remember when I first came to America, nobody had a clue what a black Englishman was. I was either South African or Australian to them.

As an actor, you just like to be able to play as much range. I just want to be invisible. I want to be able to be perceived as an artist as opposed to 'a black actor': that's the joy.

What I like about the Carpenter take on 'The Thing' is the fact that it just has so much suspense. It seemed like a different story, with the horror elements.

Those films that really speak to the primal fear that we, as human beings, have about the unknown have always intrigued me. That's the really scary thing, not the slasher, macabre movies. It's the ones that deal with the inner fear: the unknown realms and the mysticisms that are scary.

I grew up watching 'Rambo' and 'Rocky' and all of those movies, so you have a surreal moment, even as an actor, when you're in front of these guys, whether it's DeNiro or Stallone. You have a moment like, 'Geez, that's Sylvester Stallone,' and then you have to snap out of it and get back in the pocket of the character.

As an actor, you really want to resonate with your audience.

I don't really look at genre. I mean, sometimes you might be playing heavies a lot, and you're like, 'Hey, it'd be nice to do a romantic comedy.'

To play these twisted, tormented characters is very draining. You have to sit in the pocket of that character for the duration of the shoot, which is normally an average of three months, and that can be taxing!

I don't really discriminate with my art. To me, it's my art, and it's to be expressed through whichever medium is there, whether it's treading the boards in the theater, on the small-screen TV, or on the large screen. I love theater, and it's definitely something I would love to do.

The practice of pumping up before the scene, especially if you've got your shirt off, most actors will do that.

I'm from Europe, England, and I actually lived in Italy.

When you're a large black man in Hollywood, the obvious stereotype is one of force and menace.

What I try to do with the accent of any character I play is not necessarily to do something that's generic - an Indian accent and that's how it sounds, for example. I think the accent needs to sound authentic on this person.

If I hadn't left South Africa, I felt I was at risk of being pigeonholed. I looked around and saw actors who, 10 to 15 years into their careers, were still playing stereotypical Afrikaans characters, stereotyped Indian characters. That was not something that I wanted for myself.

Growing up in this post-apartheid era, the first generation of teens in South Africa living in this new democracy, I often found myself feeling different. I was often the only person of color in an otherwise all-white school. And within the Indian community, because of my training with an English acting teacher, my accent was very different.

By the time I auditioned for 'Aliens in America,' the July 7 bombing had happened in London. So I'd had those experiences where I would get onto the Tube, and people would get off. So there was a lot about Raja that I understood.

I'm not auditioning to play convenience-store clerks. I don't see any benefit in that.

I create a playlist for each and every character that I play.

All of the actors that have served to me as inspiration over the years have been those more associated with dramatic work who have, in turn, been able to embody their characters and lose themselves in those characters that they create.