Anna Deavere Smith
Anna Deavere Smith
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActress
Date of Birth18 September 1950
CountryUnited States of America
trends influence celebrate
Movies, as evidenced by a chorus of protesting and celebrating Americans, influence broader trends.
listening three way
If I do three interviews in a day, I can be exhausted, because the process of hearing everyone requires that I empty out myself. While I'm listening, my own judgments and prejudices certainly come up. But I know I won't get anything unless I get those things out of the way.
exercise dancer actors
You hang around actors, or dancers, the minute you sneeze, everybody has a remedy, and we're all on a million different kinds of diets, and different kinds of things that we do for exercise.
leadership people mouths
People in power have to be careful about what comes out of their mouth. They have to find exactly the right word that can't be attacked.
school white america
Suddenly in high school, I'm in a predominantly Jewish atmosphere. Jewish people were my gate to white America.
enough ifs
If you say a word often enough it becomes you.
jobs thinking acting
If you think about what acting is supposed to be, my job is to disappear.
moving hands museums
Use your time to bathe yourself in the gift. Move your hand across the canvas. Go to museums. Make this into an obsession.
home thinking giving
I think it's really important to give yourself a very big question that you're working on that you can come home to
home imagination development
I went as far away from home as possible in terms of the development of my imagination.
character people decision
Each person has a literature inside them. But when people lose language, when they have to experiment with putting their thoughts together on the spot-that's what I love most. That's where character lives.
caring thinking way
I think we need leadership that helps us remember that part of what we are about is caring about more than the person right next to us, but the folks across the way.
real artist long
You know, real artists, we expose our flaws. We long for intimacy.
color green los-angeles
Probably the person who said the only color in Los Angeles is green was right.