A lobster roll and a few glasses of fizz and I'm happy.
Zawe Ashton
I'm doing a play at Trafalgar Studios with The Jamie Lloyd Company - 'The Maids' by Jean Genet with Uzo Aduba and Laura Charmichael, directed by Jamie Lloyd. It's one of my favourite plays by one of my favourite playwrights.
I'm a keen experimenter in the kitchen. With food, not with anything else!
I've had doors slammed in my face, I've been shouted at in my face in meetings when I've stood up for myself.
As a woman, you do have a sense that if you can do other things, then you should. If you feel, mmm, the roles are getting a little repetitive, and you know you can write, then you should write a different role.
Mum got me involved in every activity under the sun - singing, dancing and drama classes at the Anna Scher theatre school.
I don't think there's a part that I've played or something I've written or directed that hasn't smacked of 'The Wizard Of Oz.' It's the film all roads lead to for me.
I have no idea how to ever sell myself in a snazzy way.
I plan on having a long career. I don't want to burn out.
I got into a habit really early about not talking about work, ever.
For me, the banner that I want to wave in terms of giving a jump start to writers of any gender is just to make female protagonists as complex as their male counterparts.
I'm a card-carrying existentialist.
I do consider myself an artist.
I've always wanted to live somewhere extremely nice like Sloane Square… although that would probably be too nice for me.
If you're looking for reps, write letters that are short and professional. Make sure you have a really great reel of yourself. If there are friends you know who are making short films, do them - it's all material for your reel.
I hate when there's a band that you've loved and you go and see them and it's like only the really new experimental stuff from the current album.
I have a very short attention span.
Anyone who's been an usher knows it's a training in resilience. But you get such a film education. And the popcorn's free.
For me, food is all about nostalgia.
Don't worry if you're interesting enough or beautiful enough or any of the 'enoughs.'
Being yourself, or being judged as yourself, is really scary.
When you get to do things you love with every fiber of your being, it's a different experience.
I'm not really sure what defines 'success in the real world' to be honest! It's so objective once you graduate, some people work, some people start families, some go looking for themselves up mountains in Peru.
If I'm wearing the wrong clothes I can't think. It sounds so weird but it just has to be the right fabrics and like the right feeling on my body.
From the outside, some people might consider me a hipster!
In the future, the idea would be to create work for myself, as a way to work up into my 80s if nothing else. But also, I want to cast my friends in things or people I saw who weren't working and I'd be like, 'Why aren't you working, I don't understand - I'll write you a role in something.'
I do always try and do work that I'm going to be interested in talking about when it's released.
I don't tend to go into any job thinking about the audience reaction.
The first film I ushered was Lynne Ramsay's 'Morvern Callar.' I started at 18. Best job in the world. Blockbusters, indie films, classic matinees.
Relief is not a word that ever enters my mind, about anything.
What a character wears and how it affects their mood and their movements has always been very important to me. A character's clothes, if they're truthful, can make audiences feel something.
I've never lived in north or west London, so I'd like to come out of my comfort zone for a bit. But Stoke Newington is where my heart is, it's where I'm born and bred.
I do think about moving out of London a lot, whether that's L.A., whether that's Margate with half of the other Hackneyites.
I would like to have a baby.
I love the visual medium of film and TV. I love the science of it, working with the sound and the lighting and every aspect.
It has taken a long time for me to really dress as the artist that I am: I'm an indie girl, I like experimental, I like things to be subverted. Details are the fun part.
When you're an actor, wealth is about choice.
I'm Hackney born and bred and find it hard to call anywhere else home despite the extreme ongoing gentrification which gets me down.
I think I've always felt that I want to do a very specific type of work and I've made informed decisions. You know, hopefully be part of a quiet movement or revolution.
Episodic TV is notoriously brutal because just when you think 'I've got this, I know this character' you can pick up the script for series four and you die in the first episode - or your character suddenly transitions from a woman to a man.
If people call my book an actor's memoir I will be very upset. I can't bear anything too literal, so it has elements of truth and elements of fiction sitting side by side.
I had a meeting a while back with a big group of women - actors and producers and writers - who are all ethnic minorities and we just aired what we thought was happening and why, and someone said that, as a black or mixed race actress, you feel like you're renting space instead of carving out a career. But I'm just going to get on with it.
Good writing shouldn't be wrapped in cellophane. It should be open to the elements and full of maggots and it should be left to grow and deepen and fester.
My dad constantly tells me I should calm down, but I feel so sad when I see places I've known since I was a child closing. I burst out crying when a local pharmacy closed the other day; it's just going to become a shop that nobody has much of a need for. But I am trying to move with the times.
I think there's still a feeling within society, entertainment aside, that women are less funny than men.
As an actor you can always blame the director or writer for negative feedback. But as a writer, you're the reason why everyone's in the room.
How long have we got to talk about women of colour and imposter syndrome. It's a real thing, and many people have it. It's, I think, a particular characteristic of the overachiever. Because you're bottomless, you never think what you've achieved is enough.
What sometimes annoys me about the arts is increasingly that we have to put real people on screen or stage.
Some people shun the idea of role models but I think it's one of the most important things people have in life - role models, to look up to.
It's wonderful that newer brands such as Fenty are making clear statements about being for all skin tones.
