Teyonah Parris

A show like 'Orange Is the New Black' has every race and ethnicity - and you don't even have to depend on four networks any more. You can go to Amazon or Netflix and be in an award-winning show.

I've had the struggling actor experience. At one point in New York, I was holding four jobs, including bottle service girl, while I was trying to break into acting.

It's so important... to have a variety of representation on television.

Every time I see my friends on a billboard, I'm so excited. If God can do it for me or them, he can do it for everybody.

In my junior year of high school, I went to a boarding school for the arts: a school called the Governor's School for The Arts and Humanities. It was basically a mini-Juilliard - an intense training conservatory for the arts.

I went to middle school and high school, and my drama teacher, Ms. Cooper, basically nurtured me. It was always a part of my life, and my parents allowed it to be.

You have to be resilient to be a black person in America. The thing about being resilient is being able to fall apart and pick yourself up again. And putting yourself back together, that improves on what you were before.

I think social media is a slippery slope because while you're projecting something out to people, they also project back onto you what they want to see.

I try to be very particular about the roles I choose and what they say and put into the universe. I try to do my part.

When I'm filming, I keep my hair in cornrows so that they can fit a wig on top of my hair.

I, for myself, have wanted to get more into producing because I want to be a part of the conversation and be one of the voices in the story we're trying to tell.

When I looked at 'Dear White People,' you have four African-American students who are all very different and who are trying to figure out who they are. They're dealing with identity issues and crises. That is exciting to me, to see African-American young people on a page, on a screen, who are so diverse and whose stories are all so different.

I want to continue to strive towards deepening my relationship with God and finding peace in whatever trials or circumstances I may be given.

I've wanted to be an actress my whole life, and the - none of the women I aspired to be like had natural hair.

When you just come into a show that's already established, you feel that they're family, and they have a way of doing things and running things.

Ever since I was maybe nine or 10 years old, I'd say, 'I'm gonna be an actor, and I'm gonna go to Julliard, and I'm gonna be in movies.' My parents never said, 'What's your backup plan?'

An actor hears 'no' more often than the average person. A black human and a black woman on top of that? That's a lot of no's.

When you have filmmakers like Justin Simien, writers, producers, actresses like Lena Waithe, who are people of color, they're creating their own content and saying, 'You know what? We're not going to wait on someone else to tell our story. We're going to do it ourselves. You can be a part of it or not.'

I'm influenced by many things. Simply turning on the television, I feel inundated with images and messages to be a certain way. So I try to limit my influences by being aware of what I allow into my environment. I'm always conscious of what's trying to creep into my subconscious.

Why aren't there films being made that tell ethnically diverse stories? Or why is it so impossible to allow a person of color to add their texture and their essence to a role that is not ethnically specific? I don't know why it's a novel or risky idea to consider making a film look like how our world actually looks today.