I've got a friendly smile, a greeting smile, and a you-know-exactly-what-I'm-thinking smile.
Jason Mitchell
Growing up in New Orleans and just being in a poverty-stricken neighborhood gave me that same fire that Eazy had to separate himself from what could have ended up being such a bad situation.
I'm from a very violent city. I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana, and it's good to see me be able to express my art, have a good opportunity for my life, make history and say something, without being violent.
Growing up in New Orleans helped me live a real life. I experienced so many things.
'Straight Outta Compton' is not a story we didn't know about or anything like that, but it's just something that resonated really well... It had no choice but to explode.
I want people to have learned from me. When you watch movies that we grew up on, they teach you life lessons about friendship, brotherhood, integrity, but it's still funny and something you can watch as a family. I want to bring that back to our culture in general.
I just never really understood the reason I understood movies so well, and I didn't realize that me being such a people-watcher was even a gift at all.
John Goodman has such a good way of breaking the ice. He's so good at being himself. A lot of people aren't really good at that. He knows that he's a legend. He knows that he's one of the greatest.
History is history, and it has to be told, and with 'Mudbound,' it's beautiful because you get to sit with both sides - the white and the black - and see where we meet each other at the end of the day and see where we tear each other apart.
I want to be able to speak to some real things.
The worst thing in the world is telling yourself you can't do something.
I was the epitome of rags to riches.
I can remember being young and being outside and watch guys go through what they go through with the police, and old ladies come outside their house and be like, 'Oh, Lord, they're hitting him,' or whatever is happening. You see it right in front of your face.
I lived the street life for a minute; I lost a lot of friends.
I definitely have a lot of different layers inside of me.
As crazy as it may sound, it's like my tranquil place, where I sit, and I have my candy for a minute, and I just space out, and it's just me and my candy.
I met Leonardo DiCaprio and Busta Rhymes the same night, on my birthday in New York.
Anybody who knows me knows that I'm just here to put a smile on people's faces.
You can't be Eazy-E and not move a certain way, basically. So, I studied the culture of it, and also, one of my uncles is from L.A., and he's great. He was like my performance coach. He helped me get the lingo down pat. He helped me get a lot of things down pat because I would talk in that accent for 10 hours a day.
I already have two movies in the can, low-key, which are 'Vincent-N-Roxxy' and 'Keanu' with Key and Peele, which is my first comedy, and it's going to be super dope, definitely funny. They're so great, and they've been such life coaches to me.
I didn't know how capable I was until the people around me in acting school would say I was good.
I eat a lot. I'm a big sandwich dude. Turkey, mayonnaise, mustard, cheese, yes. I love craft services.
I auditioned for 'Pitch Perfect,' and I had to sing. It was terrible.
I'm very acrobatic. I can do backflips and all that crazy stuff.
If you get it right, it's the most grand thing you could ever do. So many people let biopics slip through their fingers, but the opportunity to play Eazy-E could change my life.
I didn't really plan on fame. I never really factored that part into my life.
I've lived so much life as a young man. New Orleans, we got terms, and one's like, 'He jumped off the porch early.' That's kind of what happened to me. I had to grow up really quick.
I've realized the person that I've always been and this gift that I've always had just had to be brought to light. It surprised me the most that being more who I am and not who I thought I had to be would make me successful.
I can do a backflip on the spot. I learned how from watching 'Ninja Turtles' movies as a kid. Whenever the Turtles got in trouble with their teacher, Master Splinter, he'd make them practice backflips as punishment - and I was so focused on becoming one of the Turtles that I taught myself how to do one, too.
I've got some stories to tell, and acting was a way I could express myself and not feel stupid. I fell in love with that.
We've got to start making people uncomfortable in themselves and not being comfortable being racist or homophobic or any of that. We've got to cut that out from the inside.
I want to keep continuously going through all the pages in the book of being an actor.
I've done history; I've done biopics, I've done a little bit of comedy. I just want to keep going and show people that you can't typecast me, you can't pigeonhole me.
I worked as a cook before starting acting.
To be honest, acting was something where I got a chance to be somebody else and forget about the situation I was in.
Everybody just has to be held accountable for their own actions.
People find the humor in life all the time. And you have to in order to make it through real life. Like, some things are tragic, but you have to laugh.
You have to continue to smile through life. And it's good when you get to bring that out in a character.
The skill set that I think we have as actors is so cool because they train you in ways that you never thought you'd be trained. And that's skills that they can't take back. So as you go further in your career, you can dump all these skills into things.
I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana. It's not a black-and-white type of thing down there. It's a very cultural place. Everybody has the same accent. It's not like if you're white we can't hang with you or anything like that. So it's easy for us to call each other out on our things.
