Chadwick Boseman

I think there's a difference between a working actor, a movie star and a celebrity. They're all three different things.

Even after I became involved in theater and involved in TV and film, I had this sort of idea that Hollywood was off limits. There was something about L.A., the mystique of it and fear of it.

The thing I love about Marvel in general is that they deal with people. They deal with the human being first: Who is inside the suit? Who is the person that obtained this power or this ability?

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.

When you make movies, it's such an important period of time, when you look back at each one of them. You want to be able to say that you did something that was a challenge and that changed you.

I watched movies, obviously, just like anybody else, but there was nothing to make me think, 'I'm going to go to L.A. and become a movie star,' or anything like that.

I started out as a writer and a director. I started acting because I wanted to know how to relate to the actors. When people ask me what I do, I don't really say that I'm an actor, because actors often wait for someone to give them roles.

For me, being a complete artist means not necessarily just being in front of the camera, but being behind the camera or being the originator or creator of something.

One of the first things I was taught as an actor was, 'Don't judge the character.'

I'm an artist. Artists don't need permission to work. Regardless of whether I'm acting or not, I write. I write when I'm tired in fact, because I believe your most pure thoughts surface.

I said yes too much. I said yes to certain projects that weren't for me. It was somebody else's vision and somebody else's dream and somebody else's artistic endeavor, but it didn't necessarily fit in my grand scheme.

I was raised in a sort of village. I have a huge family, and I think there is strength in that. It helped me to deal with some of the complications of living in the South because I always felt like I belonged, no matter what.

I would go through these cycles of being really, really focused on work, and not being around anyone, to being around everyone. And that could be distracting. It was nothing or everything.

Some people would view Jackie Robinson as a very safe African-American, a docile figure who had a tendency to try to get along with everyone, and when you look at his history, you learn that he has this fire that allows him to take this punishment but also figure out savvy ways of giving it back.

I'm from Anderson, S.C., but I grew up in the South. So I know what it is to ride to school and have Confederate flags flying from trucks in front of me and behind me, to see a parking lot full of people with Confederate flags and know what that means. I've been stopped by police for no reason.

I like ambiguity because you may be the villain in someone else's story and the hero in your own, and I think very often, African-American characters are either one thing or the other. You shouldn't have to be perfectly good or perfectly bad. You don't even have to be magical.

Actors can have a fair amount of hate for each other, so when another actor says, 'You did your thing,' or 'That was inspiring,' you can't really ask for more than that.

People don't want to experience change; they just want to wake up, and it's different.

As soon as I came to L.A., things immediately shifted for me. I was now actually here with the people who were making the decisions; I wasn't out in New York sending in tapes to L.A.

When you play characters, you shouldn't just be putting on their characteristics - you should be finding it inside yourself.

When they call you and say, 'So you want to play 'Black Panther?'' if you know what 'Black Panther' is, there's no way in the world you're going to say no because there's a lot of opportunity for magic to happen.