I identify myself as an actor, because I feel like you don't go to the doctress, you go to the doctor; it doesn't matter what the gender is. I think actresses worry about eyelashes and cellulite, and women who are actors worry about the characters we are playing. A separate category is another way of making us a special-interest group.

Alfre Woodard

Categorized in : Thinking Character Doctors

Everybody has a part of her body that she doesn't like, but I've stopped complaining about mine because I don't want to critique nature's handiwork ... My job is simply to allow the light to shine out of the masterpiece.

Alfre Woodard

light inspiring jobs

When you expect good, it's available constantly, and it makes itself a reality in your life.

Alfre Woodard

inspirational-life inspirational reality

When black women stick together, we are the most powerful force in the universe.

Alfre Woodard

black powerful together

Even when I was saying I was Agnostic and trying to figure out my thoughts, I felt God was allowing me to do that.

Alfre Woodard

agnostic figures trying

I am not getting any younger and am taking a new approach to life.

Alfre Woodard

new-approach approach life

A good writer - and I think it's this way with actors too - even if you have two lines, you have to do the same complete work as if you're number one on the call sheet. If you get in an elevator and somebody gets on, rides two floors and gets off, that person has a reality that goes back to when they were born. They have memories, they have people, they have a life. They are doing something right now that the camera is on them in their space. We live in our own close-up all the time.

Alfre Woodard

memories reality thinking

I have always done what I wanted to do.

Alfre Woodard

done wanted

I think people need to understand that with plays and with cinema, when you hear about it, call and get a ticket then or go and see it then. It's especially with the play, which I can do because it's a limited run.

Alfre Woodard

play running thinking

When you feel a connection, a gut connection, a heart connection, it's a very special thing. What's familiar to everyone is watching people falling in love; it doesn't happen on screen that often. People fall in lust, then they're suddenly together.

Alfre Woodard

heart love fall

Once our storyline gets under way, I just hope people don't throw cabbages at me in the market.

Alfre Woodard

cabbage people way

People live a lot freer in their body and their voices and their moves than people act onscreen.

Alfre Woodard

people moving

Americans have a hard time writing moms. I'll get a script and everything's really great and well-drawn, but the mom is like stock footage, they go and get that out. They plug it in, this idea of "mother." You could lift moms out of any script, no matter what the culture, what the neighborhood, what the economic status, and you could switch them around, and they'd be the same person. I think it's because most people don't really have a human idea, a specific life that they attach to who their mother was. Their mother was there for them, so it either gets deified, or the opposite.

Alfre Woodard

mom mother writing

The ones I love most are the people who the flaws show. I like doing characters that we see the total person. If people get afraid to show the flaws because they think, "Oh, then nobody will like them," then you end up with a lot of products, and everybody wants to be frigging heroic all the time - not what people are trapped in every day, like your skirt being in your panties after you walk out of the bathroom. Being human. Sometimes when people are drawn to your work, they're drawn because they recognize themselves or their loved ones or their neighbor in it.

Alfre Woodard

character people thinking

I was like, wait a minute. When I hear my sisters' names, I want to have a joyful feeling in my heart about it.

Alfre Woodard

names waiting heart

I rather go to see a good play than be in one.

Alfre Woodard

play

The Playtex Secrets survey truly uncovered some thought-provoking and provocative secrets of real American housewives. In fact, many of the findings would make great fodder for a storyline on the show!

Alfre Woodard

thought-provoking real secret

Television studios bet the farm on reality shows, where they didn't need any actors and movie studios had no plans for any quality movies that required the presence of me.

Alfre Woodard

agriculture movie reality

You very seldom see a picture where you watch the process of falling in love.

Alfre Woodard

falling-in-love watches fall

Everyone has the impulse to be elite.

Alfre Woodard

impulse elites

Does my character hate Bree? Well, let's just put it this way. Bree hasn't seen the last of me. I gave that drunk gal a ride home a few episodes ago and she turned on me!

Alfre Woodard

hate home character