Omari Hardwick

Poetry is almost like my foundation for everything. I almost feel I am a better actor and writer because of it.

On 'Being Mary Jane,' I learned to embrace sex symbol.

I don't make a big deal out of playing football at UGA to people who have interviewed me.

Like anybody who grew up in the Eighties, I cringe at the thought of these movies being remade, because of the corniness and cheesiness of the originals.

I always have a backpack. I was a poet, so it reminds me of being a backpack poet.

That's the thing with me being a former athlete: in the way I attack characters and attack poetry is from the base of being an athlete.

So many athletes who have been close to me have been everything to me.

I was definitely a Daddy's boy.

You can't look at the dollar and say, 'I'm not what I dreamed of being unless I do this type of movie and it's a blockbuster that gives me this amount of dollars.' That's not good.

I was at UGA playing with Champ Bailey and Hines Ward - both guys who will probably touch the Hall of Fame one day.

As a poet, I would always hear emcees come up to me and say, 'Yo, you should rap,' and I was like, 'No.' You know, the label was tough for me. I'm a poet. I was proud of that distinction between the two, not wanting to be the other.

When it's all said and done, I am secure enough with my manhood to say to the world, 'I am a male actor, and its okay for me to play a gay man.'