I've spent my whole career trying to stay out of any box that anyone could put me in. 'I'm going to do a play now.' 'Now I'll do a musical.' That was my instinct. So I don't feel boxed in. But 'African-American woman' is part of my identity. I don't want to relinquish that - especially as a mother, helping my daughter find her identity.

I think they're an incredible honor. I'm grateful and flattered by them. But I have no control over winning awards - I have no control over any of that.

Maybe it's because my uncle and my parents were always very involved with the civil rights movement, so I just grew up and I was raised that you have to speak out and look out for your fellow man, woman, and child.

I find that I'm just drawn to anything that's going to challenge me as an actress. So, anything that's going to help me grow.

All this misjudgment that we have of each other is based on ignorance. The second you get to travel, you see that human beings, no matter where they come from, they are the same.

Capricorns like to stay in one place. I have to go to work in places like New York, but basically, I don't want to go anywhere. One time, I got a trip around the world for doing something on television, and the travel agent was so excited, I gave her the tickets.

Through his long, productive career, Paul Theroux has mixed nonfiction books about exotic travel with novels set in exotic places. Africa, Singapore, Hong Kong, Honduras - he lives in and writes about places most of us never see.

You know that I had heard so many times people say things like, 'You could never write 'Harry Potter' and have it be about Harriett Potter because nobody would read it; people only want to read an adventure story if it's about a boy,' and I thought, 'I don't think that's true.'