If you're going to play human beings, and you're going to play them three-dimensionally, you have to show every side of them.
Interpretation
To portray humans authentically, one must capture their complexity and multidimensional nature.
David Oyelowo emphasizes that in order to truly represent human beings in any medium, it's essential to showcase their complexities and multifaceted personalities. A well-rounded portrayal involves capturing both their strengths and weaknesses, ultimately leading to a more authentic and relatable depiction of the human experience.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about character development in literature and film.
I had always known that I couldn't play Dr. King purely out of my own ability as an actor. When you look at him give those speeches, you can tell that he is taken up by something other than himself. He is flowing with an anointing that is directly from God.
I grew up watching period dramas, as we all did in the 1980s and '90s - endless adaptations of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens - and I loved them. But I never saw anyone like me in them, so I decided to find a story to erode the excuses for me not doing one.
You will never, I think, fully conquer the play. Every night, you see this Everest before you. It's that two, three hours and the audience, and you'd better tell the truth.
Generally speaking, we as black people have been celebrated more for when we are subservient when we are not being leaders or kings or in the center of our own narrative driving it forward.
Excellence is the best weapon against prejudice. I intend to be part of the solution and not the problem. You've just got to keep on banging out good performances.
What we usually do to great men and women is relegate them to homogenised heroism. Their words and actions become soundbites and images in a way that gives us an excuse not to act bravely in our own lives.
We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images.
Art's task is to save the soul of mankind.. anything less is a dithering while Rome burns.
Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you're a director. Everything after that you're just negotiating your budget and your fee.
When I moved to New York City in 1965, I wanted to be in theater. I was following my Ethel Barrymore dream. But I was too young to be Ethel.
Hay que ser absolutamente Moderno
I'd spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then, "Nowhere Man" came, words and music, the whole damn thing, as I lay down...Song writing is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed sleep.
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