“When children and youth are deprived of their right to education, their community is deprived of a sustainable future. It is all the more true with refugees.”
― Forest Whitaker
“Stereotypes do exist, but we have to walk through them.”
― Forest Whitaker
“When I was a kid, the only way I saw movies was from the back seat of my family’s car at the drive-in.”
― Forest Whitaker
“There’s a molecule inside of you that is connected to everything – every person, every energy, every thing. You look for it, and when you find it, then you allow it to magnify and grow and be the dominating chemistry inside of you.”
― Forest Whitaker
“Our leaders must hear us speaking on behalf of our brothers and sisters in South Sudan. If the moral duty to save lives and work toward peace is not compelling enough to drive decision-makers, we must remind them that we care and will hold them accountable.”
― Forest Whitaker
“It rests in the hands of the common person as well as those with the power to shape humanity’s course toward a world where every child, woman and man’s most basic needs are met.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I always stand up for what I believe and what I want to.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I always try to remain aware that what affects others affects me, too.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I see a deep connection between peace and change: peace always starts from within, for communities and people alike. The same is true of change: real change starts from within.”
― Forest Whitaker
“May we remain connected in love. We are one.”
― Forest Whitaker
“You try to pull away the experiences until you get to the core of humanity, and you find that light that exists in everybody. It’s that light that I’m searching for in all of my work – is that connective thing, that ether that enters all of us – you know what I mean? That’s a part of God.”
― Forest Whitaker
“Ultimately, all human beings fulfill their patterns. We’re set in a certain archetype, and we fulfill that destiny.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I think I didn’t know whether I wanted to keep acting deep into my career. I kept trying to see if I would be able to do it well enough to make that part of my destiny or part of what I was supposed to do.”
― Forest Whitaker
“Until film is just as easily accessible as a pen or pencil, then it’s not completely an art form. In painting, you can just pick up a piece of chalk, a stick, or whatever. In sculpture, you can get a rock. Writing, you just need a pencil and paper. Film has been a very elitist medium. It costs so much money.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I was in middle school right around the time the Bloods and the Crips started taking root in Compton and a lot of the other neighborhoods around me. I saw way too many of my peers – smart, kind, good kids – who got drawn into gangs and violence, and their futures were going to be forever scarred by that.”
― Forest Whitaker
“As human beings, we all have reasons for our behavior. There may be people who have certain physiological issues that dictate why they make certain choices. On the whole, though, I think we’re dictated by our structure, our past, our environment, our culture. So once you understand the patterns that shape a person, how can you not find sympathy?”
― Forest Whitaker
“It is possible for a kid from east Texas, raised in south central LA and Carson, who believes in his dreams, commits himself to them with his heart, to touch them and to have them happen.”
― Forest Whitaker
“As an actor, I’ve always wanted to do characters that would help me find my connection with others and connect all of us together. You always want the energy of the character, the spirit of the person, to enter you. I’ve been doing this for 26 years and some of the things I’ve done are always with me.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I can play a man who’s despicable. But I’ll still look inside him to find a point of connection. If I can find that kernel, audiences will relate to me.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I’m an actor. And I guess I’ve done so many movies I’ve achieved some high visibility. But a star? I guess I still think of myself as kind of a worker ant.”
― Forest Whitaker
“In a lot of films, they’re showing more complete, developed characters of diverse ethnic backgrounds. The larger concern is to be able to tastefully explore the stereotypes, and still move past them to see the core of people.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I care about people. In the end, I think they feel it. It comes across, regardless of the character I’m portraying.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I really wasn’t even sure if I should continue acting. I would like try and figure out if I could be good enough to do it. It was like 10 or 12 years into my career before I felt like maybe I can do it. It was such a different time than now.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I’ve been trying to understand conflict and violence ever since I was a kid. You know. There were a few things that happened even on my block – the Black Panthers used to be right around the corner from where we were.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I liked ‘Star Wars’ as a kid. I liked science fiction.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I was asked if I would play President Obama in ‘My Name is Khan.’ I didn’t feel comfortable with doing it. Partly because he was still in office, but mainly because I felt that there were other people who were better suited to doing the role.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I can’t say I follow it, but I’ve watched ‘Downton Abbey’ a couple of times and loved it.”
― Forest Whitaker
“Poitier opened the doors to so many artists, not just black artists. There is a line that goes from black to Latin to Asian with regards to roles.”
― Forest Whitaker
“If there is inequality, and that equates with colour, then I’m going to deal with it.”
― Forest Whitaker
“The first time I ever went out of the country, it was to London. I was with the choir from my college, and we were touring around all these different churches. I loved it so much I tried to find a way to stay there.”
― Forest Whitaker
“You have to ask if the country would have been ready for Barack Obama if we hadn’t been prepared by Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. If they hadn’t already been in positions of enormous power and influence – secretary of state, secretary of defence – you know what I mean?”
― Forest Whitaker
“I’d spend every summer in Longview on my grandfather’s farm. It was a tiny little town divided by a river, which was the segregation line: that side white, this side black. And meanwhile, I lived in Compton – basically, another whole world sealed into 10 square blocks. It’s interesting how insular an environment can be.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I try to live my life in a holistic way, show that all of it intersects because I’m coming from the same place. Now, at the core of it, I’m just trying to connect and be there, so I’m trying to be there for my family, my wife, my kids, my friends.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I stay true because whatever the project is, I’m still looking for inside of that character. It’s the thing that connects him to me and to everybody else. So, the search is the same. It’s to unveil the truth, and that’s how I stay true, because my purpose isn’t altered.”
― Forest Whitaker
“In life, there’s a ladder sometimes, and maybe at the top, there’s a mirror. You take a step up, then maybe three steps down… just because you don’t want to face the decloaking in the mirror.”
― Forest Whitaker
“It’s a contract of connection to be in the same space and watch and listen to stories and be caught in them. When you’re in a theater, your brain expands because somebody in the theater may do something or respond to something that you wouldn’t have.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I submerged myself in all the information that I could find about Idi Amin. I mean, before I left Los Angeles, I was studying Kiswahili. I was working on the dialect. I was studying every documentary and tape of him that I could find – not just visual, but also audiocassettes, even in other languages when he was speaking in other dialects.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I had been playing really interesting roles before I got great roles. Little ones – ‘The Crying Game’ I loved working on, and then ‘Bird,’ ‘Ghost Dog,’ so many films.”
― Forest Whitaker
“It’s hard for me to judge my own films as an artist sometimes. But as an artist, I did feel a fulfillment working on them, you know?”
― Forest Whitaker
“The key is that I’m trying to keep growing and trying to keep learning and deepen my connection in every way, in my life, in my work. That’s what I do when I look at a role.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I think I’ve made some choices that maybe I wasn’t so sure about for some reason or another. But I’m one of the lucky ones. Even when I was young, I played Bird, and that’s a role people wait for their whole lifetime.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I’m always surprised when an actor goes so deeply into the truth that they shake you to your core.”
― Forest Whitaker
“My eye? It’s a genetic thing. My dad had it, and now I have it. You know, I just found out that it may be correctable a little bit, because it does impair my vision. When I look up, I lose sight in this eye. I think, maybe for other people, it informs the way they see me.”
― Forest Whitaker
“It’s all about destiny. That’s why people look at the zodiac or the I Ching – because there’s a certain order to life, and that order has been lived since the beginning of time. No matter what you do, you’re going to live inside of it.”
― Forest Whitaker
“If I go to a reunion in east Texas, my mother’s side or my father’s, one out of ten is a preacher or a teacher. That’s just the way it is in my family.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I think ‘The Color of Money’ was very instrumental in opening up other opportunities. People started to recognize me as an artist after that film. And then, after I did ‘Bird,’ it was more solidified.”
― Forest Whitaker
“Good science fiction is always based in contemporary truths.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I think the only consistent thing is that I like projects that explore different social themes. ‘Our Family Wedding’ is a comedy, but it deals with two different cultures coming together. It’s also about people letting go.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I’ve had many incidents in my life of racism. I’ve been thrown on the ground. I’ve been frisked. I’ve been arrested so many times I couldn’t tell you. I have no need to talk about it.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I’m inspired to work with good actors, period. I want to work with the best anytime because I think they’ll make me better.”
― Forest Whitaker
“To try and act like we haven’t had great progress is not true. Obama didn’t fail – he changed the psyche of the nation and, in some ways, the world.”
― Forest Whitaker
“It’s tough when you have to be away. But I’m probably at home more than my dad was because he was working two or three jobs sometimes.”
― Forest Whitaker
“My wife, Keisha, came home once, and I had these violinists playing for her, and I’d prepared dinner for her, and I write poems. She’s pretty amazing, so I like to celebrate that. She’s really taught me how to celebrate life; that’s something I’ve learned.”
― Forest Whitaker
“My wife is completely different from me: she’s good with everyone, whereas I’m good at directed conversation when I have a purpose for it, like now. If everyone’s sitting around being social, I’m not great.”
― Forest Whitaker
“On the whole, I now see my work as being an expression of my spiritual life and, because I look at it that way, I have a different centre. I go through the stress and pressure, but I think I’m lucky because I come from a different source point.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I’ve been fortunate, I guess: I’ve gotten to play a lot of very diverse roles for quite a long time. But in the beginning, I was thinking, ‘I’m not gonna do certain characters. I will be willing to say no and live on a couch.’ And I was really happy.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I fell through a stage once. I was doing a truly African dance, and all of a sudden, I hit the ground with my foot and went straight through the stage. I guess they didn’t have much money, so the floor was kind of rotting.”
― Forest Whitaker
“It’s abhorrent to me that somebody is just evil, and you can’t explain it.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I’m fascinated by the capacity to be able to do harm. I struggle every day with the ability of people to do evil. Not just the big things – the petty things that people do in order to make someone feel small, when it’s so easy to do, and it hurts so much.”
― Forest Whitaker
“College football, acting, opera singing – I approached them all in the same obsessive way.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I put down the camera long ago, you know? I was here in London, aged 19, and I was obsessed with my camera, shooting everything I could. Then someone stole it. It helped me to see things for the first time.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I’d been reading Eastern philosophy since I was a kid. And I meditated. I did it on a daily basis. It’s the one thing I do with any consistency. Meditation gives you a different kind of mindset. It’s very powerful.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I was a curious child. I’d debate with anyone who came to the door – people from the Islamic community… Jehovah’s Witnesses… anyone.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I love to play chess. The last time I was playing, I started to really see the board. I don’t mean just seeing a few moves ahead – something else. My game started getting better. It’s the patterns. The patterns are universal.”
― Forest Whitaker
“Fame allows you a lot of opportunities to experience new things and connect with people. But on the other hand, people’s perceptions of you can limit the scope of your relationships with them. You walk both lines.”
― Forest Whitaker
“The Internet is part of our evolution. The mystics used to say, ‘We can travel across the planet in a thought.’ Now we really can. We can be connected with a million people at a time.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I want a director who can let me feel that he’s listening and watching and that he’s got me covered. That security is really important for me because sometimes you go into a vulnerable space, and you want to be able to look to somebody because you get insecure: ‘Did I do that right?’”
― Forest Whitaker
“Look – I’m an African-American. I’m black. But I’m just looking at the character and trying to find his soul, his energy. If you can wipe away the blanket of skin and flesh that people tend to see, and look inside for the essence of the soul, then that’s the work I’m doing. That’s the work I always do.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I want to get better as an actor, to keep trying to work harder, trying to discover something different. In some ways, it’s a pretty frightening experience. But normally, I do tend to walk against fear and hope that I’ll be able to survive.”
― Forest Whitaker
“We’re supposed to be an example of freedom, and if we are doing things that are injustice to people, then what is our statement?”
― Forest Whitaker
“It’s important for youth, black youths particularly, to be able to fill in the blanks of themselves so they can know completely who they are, but also all the country to understand what this means: what the civil rights movement does to us as people. It is part of the journey that we must be on in order to become fully evolved human beings.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I try to be like a forest, revitalizing and constantly growing… Kids would tease me, calling me ‘Little Bush.’ But… I thought being called Forest helped me find my identity.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I go back and forth between indie and studio because I feel like it, not because I feel obligated to do one or the other.”
― Forest Whitaker
“In high school, I did some musicals, but I never took acting until college. I was studying opera, classical voice, and a speech teacher asked me to audition for this play, and I got the lead.”
― Forest Whitaker
“Directing is more comfortable for me because, as an actor, there’s always something inherently false. Because I’m not that person.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I am just back from South Sudan, one of the world’s most fragile nations. For years, I have been moved by the kind people who maintain hope that they will live to see peace. My heart has ached for them, as they have endured pain and violence that make such hope feel out of reach.”
― Forest Whitaker
“While it’s easy for South Sudan to feel distant, the situation is all too real for the South Sudanese mothers choosing which child gets to eat tomorrow. This is a time when we must look outward together and declare that humanity has no borders – no one deserves to suffer like this, especially in a world of such abundance.”
― Forest Whitaker
“When we talk about the issue of child soldiers, it can be easy to focus just on ending recruitment and liberating those boys and girls who are currently being held in military camps. Obviously, both of these are incredibly important goals, but it’s also essential that we not forget about former child soldiers once they are liberated.”
― Forest Whitaker
“In some sense, when you take a child soldier out of an armed group, you’ve taken away the identity he or she has had for years, and you can’t assume life is just going to return to normal.”
― Forest Whitaker
“For many child soldiers, war and violence are all they have ever known. If we don’t take it upon ourselves to show them an alternative, then they’re going to be soldiers forever, and they’ll continue to be recruited and to participate in violence if another conflict starts five or 10 years down the road.”
― Forest Whitaker
“Many of the wars we see around the world start as domestic conflicts that are fueled by external forces and powers. My view is that we can help peace if we help communities transform from the inside, on their own terms.”
― Forest Whitaker
“The characters I’ve portrayed may outwardly be quite different from one another, but I’ve found that they’re also intrinsically linked.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I think that cinema and the arts are central in our lives because we grow up and learn about the world through our exposure to stories. Parents use them as a tool to teach their children fundamental truths and values, much as adults can view them to gain exposure to cultures and individuals that they’d never be able to view in their own lives.”
― Forest Whitaker
“Cinema and the arts invite viewers to focus on a story and, in doing so, peel away its layers and peer into the depths of the human soul.”
― Forest Whitaker
“I try to support stories that enable us to see the difficulties in our society and the challenges we face, which is why I’ve also produced documentaries like ‘Brick City’ and ‘Serving Life.’”
― Forest Whitaker
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