Mahershala Ali

Mahershala Ali

Actor

Mahershala Ali is an acclaimed actor known for his powerful performances in films like 'Moonlight' and 'Green Book,' exploring themes of identity and resilience.

Thinking Mother People School Character College
Born
February 16, 1974
Quotes
60
Rank
#2290

Quote collection

Mahershala Ali quotes (page 2 of 3)

60 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

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"My experiences growing up - my father lived in New York, so I was going out there in the summers and meeting really interesting people and people having what seemed to me to be extraordinary experiences and really taking advantage of these wonderful opportunities. And so I will go - I would go to the big city and watch these people performing onstage and doing television and films. And then I would go back to Hayward, and it just suddenly felt that much smaller and sort of limiting because I had this hyper awareness of how much larger the world was."

Summer New York Growing Up
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"Having a child is the polar opposite experience of the awards season experience. The awards-season experience requires you to be out in the community, in the heart of the community, at the nucleus of the film community in a really committed way for about a six-month period of time. Having a child requires you to nest, to be in your home, and to create and make your home and environment that is one that is potentially very welcoming and nurturing for a child."

Children Home Heart
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"I think in some ways, I would go back home, and I didn't really quite fit in and couldn't - didn't have a person to bounce those experiences off of. So I felt a little bit trapped within me, and it made me feel lonely because I really couldn't - the things that were exciting to me, I couldn't really share those with another kid and that other kid understand that."

Lonely Home Kids
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"I became more curious about the story behind the story [in the House of Cards]. So what was really going on behind the headline? And it's a little bit sad that that show, it doesn't seem so much like entertainment the way it did back when we started doing it."

House Of Cards Stories Littles
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"My parents were kids when I was born. My mother was 16. My father was 17, and they got married in high school. And they split a few years later. When they split was when all that was happening also, and he - they were just coming into themselves. But they remained friends."

Mother Father School
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"I've personally been on the outside sometimes. But I was - I personally was never persecuted especially in the way in which sharing my own experiences."

Way Sometimes Persecuted
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"How do I transform and be believable as Krogstad in "A Doll's House" or Sir Peter Teazle in "A School for Scandal"."

School House Dolls
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"I got into [acting] so late because of sports. And then when I was in grad school, I sort of got lulled into basically forgetting I was black, in - meaning that everyone you play at a conservatory, 95 percent of the characters are non-black."

Sports School Character
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"It was really a focus on how to in some ways keep moving in this direction towards something that allowed me to express myself in a way that sports didn't."

Sports Moving Focus
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"I played all four years [at St. Mary's College] with - at a certain point, basketball became the thing I was doing most, but it was really in my periphery."

Basketball College Years
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"I didn't have the passion for athletics in that way, that there were other parts of me that felt under-served and that needed to be nurtured and needed my energy."

Passion Energy Way
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"[My grandmother] was the assistant pastor at Palma Ceia Baptist Church in Hayward - my grandmother, Evie Goines. And so my mother was doing - I remember when my mother graduated from beauty college, so I was about 5, and so I guess she was about 21. And I just remember being there, taking the pictures and seeing her get her diploma and everything. But she was doing hair for many years. during that time, she kind of started to discover or tap into her religious studies. It was around the time I was starting to go through puberty and hitting, like, 12, 13."

Mother Religious College
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"When you graduate is when you start to find yourself looking at the information in the audition breakdown and it says tall black African - or African-American built such and such. And you start seeing these character descriptions and seeing that, oh, you're only going in for the ones that are described as your look."

Character African American Black
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"Isaiah the prophet, Isaiah's second son was - his symbolic name was Mahershalalhashbaz. And Isaiah was - the Prophet Isaiah was instructed to write the name in all capital letters as a prophecy. And it means hasten to the spoils, speedy as the prey."

Writing Mean Son
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"My father had a lot to do with me thinking about acting, though he never saw me act. He passed away probably - he passed away as I was doing my first play, but I just think being exposed to it and being around it. It wasn't something that I ever thought I couldn't do because I grew up around it."

Father Thinking Play
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"Getting to St. Mary's College was a big deal for me because that essentially led to me getting to go to NYU."

College Nyu Bigs
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"Between the two [parents], it was a really unique upbringing, I think, especially for where I was from."

Unique Thinking Two
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"[Crack epidemic] definitely has impacted folks in my family, most definitely. I think that's true for most, if not all people, regardless of color, that grew up in and around areas that were closer to the nucleus of the crack epidemic.If you look at Baltimore or D.C., Detroit, Chicago, Oakland, like, Los Angeles."

Thinking Epidemics Color
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"I was born in Oakland and grew up, probably about five miles from Oakland, in Hayward. And Hayward was OK. Like, Hayward wasn't - very much a working-class area and had definitely went through a decline and is now, seemingly, coming back around, which is nice to see."

Nice Oakland Class
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"I wanted to get that scholarship to - a division one scholarship and play ball and go to school for free. And that, to me, was - I was always about getting to that next step. If I could get to that next place, then I could figure out essentially what to do with being in that space and how to manage my time and handle those - handle all the benefits of being in that space in a way that would get me to the next place."

School Play Space
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