Ving Rhames Quotes

My brother and I slept on the couch. I didn't get my own room until I was in college. We didn't even have a telephone until I was in college.

You get Don King's point of view in what is almost a Shakespearean, classical technique. He comes across almost like a lovable rogue, like Iago in 'Othello' or Richard III. He's doing all these bad things, but I kind of like him. It's like 'Pulp Fiction': Everybody's a bad guy, yet you like them.

Miss Goodblatt would call on me to read. She said I had a talent. So on a whim, I auditioned for the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan.

I don't need dialogue to convey emotion or thoughts to my audience.

I spent three days with Don King, and I interviewed 45 people. I studied his speech, his mannerisms. He invited me to a couple of fights, and I watched him.

You can feel I am whatever you want to feel I am. God knows who I am, and I know who I am.

I was never a struggling actor, for which I feel very blessed.

You don't have to make, you know, $3 Million dollars a movie, or $20 Million dollars a movie, but if you make a living doing what you love doing, then that's success to me.

I saw that crime pays, but I never got involved in crime.

'Mission: Impossible' is fun. But for myself as an artist, I'm really more concerned with the human condition, the human experience, especially from an African American point of view.

I graduated on a Friday. By Monday, I was doing Shakespeare in the Park.

Most American actors are taught the Stanislavsky method ... Method acting, but I really think that as an actor you have to develop what works for you. There is really not one way of doing anything. There are many ways of achieving the same goal.

I don't know if I hadn't grown up poor, and in the neighborhood I did, if I would have had that much to bring to my art form. I call upon my past with characters.

I can always do theater; I can do Ibsen, I can do Macbeth, I can do Chekhov, I can do Moliere, Othello, I can do Richard III.

I'm the spokesman for ADT, and ADT, brother, pays better than most actors make on film.

I think there's so much we don't know and the unknown in the ocean; every 10 years or so, we find some fossil that's been there before mankind.

The more versatile you make yourself, the more work you get. Training makes you more versatile and ultimately gets you more work. Julliard taught me that.

'Mission: Impossible' is basically entertainment, and for what it is, it's fine. I don't think most actors become actors to do that type of film.

When I think of the trials and tribulations that black men go through in America and that black artists went through, I feel very privileged.

In this industry, very few actors can control their career.

Entertainment is needed, and so I do think escapism is needed.

When I look at the world, I recognize that unfortunately, it sometimes takes an atrocity like 9/11 to force us to come together.

I graduated college in 1983, so that's 32 years, and all I've done for a living is act or commercials or voiceovers. So I have nothing to complain about.

The only difference between working on a huge-budget film and a lesser-budget film, is the quality of lunch and dinner.

It's really how you deal with people. Do people respect you? Are you honest with people even if it's something they don't want to hear? Anyone in Hollywood will tell you I'm extremely up front and honest almost to a fault.

Using the Africanist model, each generation should take the family name to a higher place. My father's folks were sharecroppers in South Carolina. He went to Harlem. They were still poor, but they moved up. If my parents didn't do this and offer me this background, I wouldn't be here.

Are you intimidated by me? Because if you're intimidated by me, that's something you'll have to deal with.

People often think I've played the villain more times than I have.

Snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef, I saw something - I don't know what it was to this day. My mind couldn't relate to what it was ... If I saw it and knew it was a shark, I wouldn't be as afraid, but I saw something that looked prehistoric, and I haven't been snorkeling since.

There's really not that much difference between you and I. And my name really doesn't matter. Hopefully, my heart and my spirit matters to you. Hopefully.

I think God has blessed each of us with at least one gift. So I think it's a matter of do we find it within our lifetime.

I'm from New York, and yet I've done only one film executive-produced by Spike Lee and have never done a film that Spike Lee directed. I've never done a film that Keenan Wayans has directed, or Bill Duke.

I've known Laurence Fishburne for about twenty years.

How do you cut off the human side and just maintain being professional? So what I've done is I've incorporated that with Kojak - there's times when he allows the human condition, the human experience, to integrate into him as a professional.

There could be some unknown actor who's a better actor than Ving Rhames, but no one knows that actor, so Ving Rhames will get the job.

I grew up in a poverty-stricken neighborhood, but I didn't really know I was a deprived, poverty-stricken child until the media made me aware of it.

I don't give Hollywood the power to limit me. Only God can limit me.

In about 9th grade, an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He said I should audition for a performing arts high school, so I did on a whim. I got accepted. Then I got accepted at the Julliard School, and by then, I was serious about it.

God is putting me in a position to affect people.

I saw how, when my brother smoked reefer, it made my mother cry. He was 16 at the time. And I saw that she broke down and cried. I never wanted to hurt my mother, so I kept away from drugs.

I try to base my life on the principles of Christ. I try to raise my family on the principles of Christ. I don't know if that makes me religious.

For me, acting was a way of releasing all of this stuff that I had inside - and a way for me to tell the stories of the people I knew, so that their spirit could live through me.

Since I graduated college, all I have ever done for a living was acting.

The character of the computer whiz is not one that would normally be associated with me.

If someone's intimidated by me, that's something they have to deal with. When I walk down the streets of New York and an old woman grabs her purse when I pass by, I'm not going to give it a whole lot of energy because I'm not in the wrong. I'm a millionaire, and I'm not thinking about grabbing an old woman's purse.

The more you do a stunt, the more you increase the risk of something happening.

I do fish, and as a matter of fact, I used to do a lot of deep sea fishing, but as far as going into the water, I don't go out deep into the water.

I was more interested in playing sports than acting. I didn't take acting too seriously until the end of my junior year.

Quite honestly I never had a desire to be an actor. I tell people, I did not choose acting; acting chose me. I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I wanted to play football. In about 9th grade an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He said I should audition for a performing arts high school so I did on a whim. I got accepted.

I live a very simple life.

I find early jazz to be the most revolutionary music of its time.

All I want and all I even ask of people in Hollywood is look, just be honest with me. Please don't lie to me. Whatever the situation is, be honest with me.

My dogs are family dogs.

A lot of times, scripts are written so the character is all one way. Even with 'Bringing Out the Dead,' the character was written a little more generic.

My wife is a former homicide detective, LAPD. The wonderful thing that I was able to capture is my wife's experiences from human and professional, and how do you deal with some of the atrocities that happen in L.A. and not bring them home.