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I don't talk a lot when I interview. My job is to get out of the way.
Anna Deavere Smith
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Anna Deavere Smith
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: September 18
Academic
Actor
Actress
Film Actor
Playwright
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Television Actor
University Teacher
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Baltimore
Maryland
Anna Smith
Anna Devere Smith
Anna Deveare Smith
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More quotes by Anna Deavere Smith
When I got out of acting school, I was lucky to have gotten any job at all. A lot of people hiring African American actresses - it was right after 'Roots,' and for society, not me, it was great. Nice richly dark-skinned people was the fashion, and I was not.
Anna Deavere Smith
President Obama called for a 'we' nation in his Inauguration Address. Art convenes. It is not just inspirational. It is aspirational. It pricks the walls of our compartmentalized minds, opens our hearts and makes us brave. And that's what we need most in our country today.
Anna Deavere Smith
My job in my work is not to acquire power it's to question power.
Anna Deavere Smith
My main concern is theater, and theater does not reflect or mirror society. It has been stingy and selfish, and it has to do better.
Anna Deavere Smith
You've heard that old expression from Shakespeare, 'Just speak the speech'? The words themselves will take you to the reality of the character. And so this led me to interview people.
Anna Deavere Smith
You know if we were to look back and how we were in 1955 living in Jim Crow, living in segregation, living in segregated schools, it's hard to believe that it was America, but it really was.
Anna Deavere Smith
Movies, as evidenced by a chorus of protesting and celebrating Americans, influence broader trends.
Anna Deavere Smith
If you think about what acting is supposed to be, my job is to disappear.
Anna Deavere Smith
I see myself first and foremost as a student of expression.
Anna Deavere Smith
I am not myself I am the potential of myself.
Anna Deavere Smith
Perhaps art is a quest for the perfect, or even the imperfect. Reality always falls short on both sides.
Anna Deavere Smith
We spend so much time bantering about the words when the real open conversations might very well be our actions. I worry about our rhetoric.
Anna Deavere Smith
That artists are called to be more responsible and 'true' is a tip of hat to their power.
Anna Deavere Smith
Commit to finding the true nature of art. Go for that thing no one can teach you.
Anna Deavere Smith
I am interested in personal stories because that's when people become expressive, spontaneous and heartfelt.
Anna Deavere Smith
You hang around actors, or dancers, the minute you sneeze, everybody has a remedy, and we're all on a million different kinds of diets, and different kinds of things that we do for exercise.
Anna Deavere Smith
We who are in the arts are at the risk of being in a popularity contest rather than a profession. If that fact causes you despair . . . pick another profession. Your desire to communicate must be bigger than your relationship with the chaotic and unfair realities . . . We have to create our own standards of discipline.
Anna Deavere Smith
Art simply can’t be stopped.
Anna Deavere Smith
I see myself as not a typical theater person, but a person who uses the theater as a place to meet people and explore ideas.
Anna Deavere Smith
When I was a kid, my grandfather said that if you say a word often enough, it becomes you. Thinking of that later in life gave me this idea that I could try to become America by learning the words of people from many aspects of the country.
Anna Deavere Smith
