“I miss terribly being in the room with actors. I love that more than anything, but I have seen so many more people, been exposed to so many people I didn’t know, hired people from places that I can’t be.”
“The way I know that I’m reading a character that I would want to play is that I start picturing myself on the set portraying that character.” – David Oyelowo
“I have concerns, I have hopes, you know, and that’s what you want to see in a character.” – David Oyelowo
Oyelowo explains how he approached a key scene where he had to give a speech defending his character to his people.
“My ambition is to keep the audience guessing…that is my path to a long career.” – David Oyelowo
“The only thing that works is hours and hours of saying them over and over and over again” – David Oyelowo
“Don’t send me your script if you want me to play the black best friend. I just won’t do that.” – David Oyelowo
“You can’t afford for there to be gaps in your pool of knowledge when it comes to a character, otherwise what ends up onscreen is generalized and unspecific” – David Oyelowo
Playing a real person, on stage or screen, can be a burden of responsibility for even the most experienced actor.
In Selma, David Oyelowo portrays Martin Luther King, Jr. in the events surrounding the 1965 Selma voting rights marches.
The New York Times has a fun on-going series called Anatomy of a Scene where they feature a director or actor narrating a scene from their upcoming film. This week, they had director Lee Daniels narrate a scene from his new film, Lee Daniels’ The Butler. In this clip, Cecil
