When I attack a role, be it TV, film or stage, the first thing I say is, I don't want to know anything. If it's good I don't want to hear it; if it's bad I don't want to hear it. The only thing either thing can do is distract me. I like to stay focused
Interpretation
Focus on the role without external opinions to maintain artistic integrity.
Cicely Tyson emphasizes the importance of maintaining focus on her work without being influenced by external opinions, whether positive or negative. By choosing to remain uninformed about the reception of her performances, she seeks to immerse herself fully in her craft, free from distractions that could hinder her artistic expression.
In practice
In a speech about artistic dedication at a theater festival.
How do you project a character if you don't have a sense of where she is from? I've always just gotten on a plane to go to the area to get a sense of what it is like, to smell it, feel the earth, hear people talk, go to the marketplaces.
I saw that I could not afford the luxury of just being an actress. So I made a choice to use my career as a platform to address the issues of the race I was born into.
I don't think you can measure wealth in dollars and cents. I really don't believe that at all because there are some things that money cannot buy. One of them is health. And the other is security in your relationships and friends.
One of the things I have always said about the man-woman relationship is that I don't want anybody to walk ahead of me, and I don't want anybody to walk behind me. I want a man who will walk along beside me. And that's how I feel about equal rights.
Unless a piece really said something, I had no interest in it. I have got to know that I have served some purpose here.
We have to support our own films. If we don't, how can we expect others to support them?
Art is not just to show life as it is, but to show life as it should be.
I think we're going to enter a phase where there's less interest in the CGI and there's a demand for story again. I think we've dropped the ball a little bit on stories for the sake of the amazing toys that we've played with.
And I saw the sax line-up that he had behind him and I thought, I'm going to learn the saxophone. When I grow up, I'm going to play in his band. So I sort of persuaded my dad to get me a kind of a plastic saxophone on the hire purchase plan.
I'm a photographer, period. I love photography, the immediacy of it. I like the craft, the idea of saying 'I'm a photographer.'
I think what you're always looking for as artists is to be honest and to continue to be honestly driven by that which you are passionately engaged with. It should need not be forced.
There is only one true thing: instantly paint what you see. When you've got it, you've got it. When you haven't, you begin again. All the rest is humbug.
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