What's really important is the people, first of all. I like working with people who are kind, above all else. I don't really want to work with someone who will manipulate me. The idea that you must treat actors a certain way in order to get a performance out of them kind of disturbs me, and it's disregarding what we do. Our job is to do our job.

Ruth Negga

When you connect to someone on a human level, and you get to know about them, you can begin to love the things that make them different.

Ruth Negga

I think if we don't understand history, if we don't keep referring back to it, we become complacent. And complacency, as we all know, it leads to repeating history.

Ruth Negga

I don't know why women aren't allowed to have the same sort of breadth and scope and flaws of men.

Ruth Negga

I'm not the most articulate person.

Ruth Negga

Some people say to me, 'You don't sound very Irish.' It's because I have this tendency to iron out my accent: not because I'm ashamed of it but because it makes my life easier if I don't keep having to repeat myself.

Ruth Negga

People ask me where I'm from. I say Ireland, and they are like 'Really? You don't look Irish.' Then you have to explain... people are intrigued, but sometimes you think, 'Why do I have to tell my whole story every time I open my mouth?

Ruth Negga

I work best when there's a safety trampoline of kindness.

Ruth Negga

The god of theater laughs in your face at planning. You can't plan as an actor; there's no way, because so much of it is dependent on other people's choices and decisions that you're at the whim of fate, really.

Ruth Negga

I didn't become an actor to make money. And I didn't become an actor to be famous - though people always gasp if you say that, as if it's unfathomable that an actor doesn't want to be a star.

Ruth Negga

I'm not in any rush to get anywhere. There's a pressure on actors to get somewhere before it's over. But everyone wants longevity, don't they? It's a career. Why be that flash-in-the-pan, taking every job out of worry it'll soon be over?

Ruth Negga

I don't believe that directors need to essentially manipulate actors into doing things. You can suffer for your art, and you can make your own self suffer for your art. You don't need anyone else to do it for you. I work best when there's a safety trampoline of kindness.

Ruth Negga

I've gone into auditions, and I think they have an assumption about me when they see my photo, and then I open my mouth, and they say, 'Where exactly are you from? And you were born in Ethiopia? But you're Irish, but you also kind of sound English. That's really strange.'

Ruth Negga

I've always been very talkative, very chatty, quite hyperactive. I grew up with a lot of cousins, and most of them were boys. Four in particular and I were the demolition squad. Havoc.

Ruth Negga

I had a very peripatetic childhood, so I bounced around. Lived in Ethiopia until I was, like, three or four and then lived between Ireland and London.

Ruth Negga

I think it's a good thing for everybody that we see the entire world reflected back at us on our screens.

Ruth Negga

There are no actions involved in 'beautiful.' It's such an inactive thing, and it's so subject to each individual's taste and appreciation. It's a lovely word, but I feel like it's been hijacked by really boring, dull people who don't understand how to use words.

Ruth Negga

The good thing about auditioning is that you get to test yourself and see if you can play this character - you're also auditioning yourself.

Ruth Negga

I am not hugely famous; I am not a name. For me, it's not the size of the role, it's the material and the people you are working with.

Ruth Negga

I was an attention seeker, always in trouble.

Ruth Negga

We all have as much right to take up our space in the world as one another.

Ruth Negga