Sterling K. Brown Quotes

“Always have an attitude of gratitude.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Empathy begins with understanding life from another person’s perspective. Nobody has an objective experience of reality. It’s all through our own individual prisms.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Life has to be everything. It can’t be all sad. It can’t be all peaches and cream. Because the lows have you appreciate the highs. And the highs give you perspective on the lows. If it’s not everything, it becomes flat or mundane.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Any great art is meant to illuminate the human condition.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I think O. J. Simpson was a very prominent figure in the African-American community. He was sort of a manifestation of the American dream: ‘If it can happen for him, it can happen for me.’”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I didn’t grow up feeling very handsome.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I think I’ll never stop doing theater because it’s a more physical and athletic activity. You can’t pull any punches; there are no short cuts, and you have to be physically present and committed. I love the excitement and the response of being in front of a live audience.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“A couple of my favorite actors are Don Cheadle, Jeffrey Wright, and, may he rest in peace, Philip Seymour Hoffman. I’ve had an opportunity to see all of them onscreen and onstage.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“The prism through which you experience life is so unique. There is no objective experience.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I catch myself every once in a while doing that weird thing that I see famous people do, where they have sunglasses and hats on and grow out beards thinking that they’re fooling people. Dude, you’re not fooling anyone: you look just like you.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I grew up feeling unattractive, and it took a long time to grow into a place where I was comfortable with me.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“It’s always the case that the minority has to navigate two different worlds. Women have to know how to live in a man’s world. Gay people have to know how to live in a straight world. Black people gotta know how to live in a predominantly white world.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I think, for the first time, people are starting to say, ‘That’s Sterling K. Brown,’ which is cool, which is uncharted territory for your boy. It’s nice to be called by your name when you’re not in character.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I just try to do something to sweat at least an hour a day.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Every time I’d do a play, my grades would get better because I was doing something that fed my soul. It took me a couple of years to recognize that the hobby was actually the calling.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Different roles call for different aspects or different faces of Sterling to emerge.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“If I can do quality work with wonderful writers and directors and producers… that’s the cherry on top.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I see my friends and family who have a passion or a dream, but it’s now a dream deferred because they were never naive enough or brazen enough to say, ‘Let me do this.’”

― Sterling K. Brown

“It’s the people who don’t recognize the racism within themselves that can be the most damaging because they don’t see it.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Don’t become too attached to your own myopia. Just because you’ve found a way to do things doesn’t mean it’s the way to do things. There are so many different ways in which to navigate this so-called life. Be open to experiencing more than one.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“On Twitter, there’ll be fans of ‘Army Wives’ and people who say, ‘I’ve been following you since ‘Supernatural,’ I loved you on ‘Person of Interest,” and it’s really cool to get that love. To them, I’m not just an overnight success.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“When I was a young man, I worked at the Boys and Girls Club in St. Louis, Missouri, and another boys club called Matthews-Dickey.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Every character I play is me.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“It’s one thing to entertain, to educate, but to edify, to lift people up, that’s – to God be the glory.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“You can’t really fake chemistry: either you have it or you don’t, and you can’t have a relationship on screen if you don’t have one off screen. I love Sarah Paulson. I absolutely adore her. My wife has given me full permission to love Sarah Paulson, and I look forward to doing that for the rest of my life.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Sarah Paulson is the most prepared and professional actor I’ve had the privilege of working with. I learned so much about preparation and attention to detail and speaking up when something is not right.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I have gay people in my family who weren’t able to openly discuss homosexuality, and I feel like that’s shifted, especially here on the coast.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I never assume people are going to recognize me.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Running gives me the confidence to be at my peak throughout the rest of my day.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I’m a little kid from St. Louis, Missouri, on the inside.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“In my mind, I’m still this kid from St. Louis, Missouri, that nobody really knows.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“You got to let the people know while they’re here how much they’re appreciated and how much you love them.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Whether the theater is 1,000 seats or 500 seats or 200 seats, you have to make sure the person in the back of the theater can hear you and understand you. So there’s a lot of articulation and a lot of voice in theater that really just isn’t necessary when it comes to dealing with the camera.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I’m very cognizant of the image that’s being put out there and the way in which people perceive me. I’m honored and flattered that they see me as being a decent human being. I try my best to be a decent human being, but I fall short of the mark like we all do on a regular basis.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I love me some Kendrick Lamar, love J. Cole.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I have a big family of big people.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“With any character you portray, you can never play the end in the beginning. You have to pursue and attack your intention as if they’re going to be successful.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“It’s a very frightening feeling to feel like you can have a busted taillight or wear a hoodie or be playing in a park, and someone can take your life away. To have two children, two black boys, you ask yourself a lot of questions about how do I protect my family. Is there anything I can actually do?”

― Sterling K. Brown

“As a kid growing up St. Louis, Missouri, I lived in a predominantly black neighborhood. Any time people talked about slavery, it was always something like, ‘If I was a slave, I wouldn’t have been putting up with that. I would have been out in a heartbeat.’ And it’s like, sure, it’s a very easy thing to say.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“There is a reason that many African Americans have a healthy mistrust for law enforcement. We don’t always feel protected or served by that particular institution.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“The biggest compliment that I receive is when other black folks come up to me and say, ‘You changed the way that I thought about Chris Darden.’”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I’ve always told my wife, ‘Anytime I have an opportunity to be on something that I would watch even if I wasn’t on it, that’s when I get really, really giddy.’”

― Sterling K. Brown

“We all have our prejudices, and we may or may not be aware of them. Sometimes people walk by me and give me a wider berth. It happens. I wear hoodies all the time because my head gets cold. Something innocuous can be misunderstood.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“My first series regular was on a TV show called ‘Starved,’ which was so many years ago, and I was the only guy they brought in. So I go in, I read, it goes well. The next day I hear I got the job, and I rejoiced.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“There’s a time when it was an event for a black person to be on television. Where black households would gather around, ‘Oh, you know, Sammy Davis is going to be on ‘All in the Family’ tonight! Let’s go check it out!’ It was a big, big thing.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I have tremendous respect for Christopher Darden, and I recognize him as an individual of integrity, who did his job to the best of his ability, and I want to tell him thank you. Thank you for enduring hatred from his own community, for being ostracized and called an Uncle Tom and a sellout.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I was at Stanford University up in the West Coast Bay Area, so the biggest song of my freshman year was ‘I Got 5 on It’ by Luniz, and the ‘I Got 5 on It’ remix was the joint that everybody was jamming constantly. And then it was also at that particular time that I became a fan of the Wu-Tang Clan.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“When I got into Stanford in high school, I had some friends from school who told me that I just got in because I was black and whatnot.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I went to Target once and picked up three seasons of ’24’ – what I call the Jack Bauer power hour – and watched 72 episodes in ten days.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I lived in St. Louis, Missouri, and now my kids are growing up in Los Angeles, so that’s culturally very different.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I always thought that I would just be working in obscurity in perpetuity.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I’ve been able to pay the bills. I’ve been able to pay off my student loans. I was a homeowner before anything happened in the larger public eye.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I think what Hollywood is learning at large is that there is profitability in stories that are culturally specific and that you can only address the universal through the specific.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“In the gym, people’s enthusiasm tends to get the best of them. They realize this is their opportunity to say hello or that they love my work… It doesn’t matter how profusely you’re sweating.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I’ve had people come stand in front of the treadmill and wait for me to acknowledge their presence so they can speak.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“The first time I went on a serious run was when I was 21 years old at Stanford University. From 21 to 30, I continued the tradition and ran 10 miles every year on my birthday.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“My family did a lot of road trips across these continental United States when I was a kid. Twenty or so of us would caravan in four or five vehicles and hit every corner of the connected 48.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“The first trip I can remember would have to be to Marianna, Arkansas. My mother’s parents are from there, and we’d go every year to visit the church where they were buried. We’d attend church service that day, put flowers around their tombstones, and visit with family and friends that still lived there.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I’m obsessed with how people talk! Accents, dialects… So whenever I go someplace where an accent is extremely distinct – Minneapolis, New Orleans, Jamaica, Vancouver – I always find myself trying to pick up the subtleties of their patterns.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Being in a Marvel film is the pinnacle of secrecy training.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“At the highest level of your craft, you don’t have to play games or make people feel small; you can just embrace.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“As a father of two black sons now, you ask yourself, ‘What do I have to do to assure the safety of these boys?’ It can be daunting.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“What was so lovely about ‘O.J.’ and ‘This Is Us’ to a certain extent is that I got a chance to surprise people.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“If you haven’t done shows that are on everyone’s radar, then you’re something out of nowhere.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“With any sort of entertainment, you hope people are entertained.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“After six months of playing Chris Darden, it’s very hard for me to separate my views from his.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“M. Night Shyamalan can draw quite a few people to quite a few things, and having the opportunity to work with him is very cool.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“The most fundamental important thing for me as an actor is maintaining a sense of play. It’s so important.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“You can take your play seriously as long as you seriously play.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I discovered that I love being on stage in high school.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I go to grad school at NYU, and I learn all these things about speech and voice and games. It’s like camp for an actor, and I got a chance to immerse myself 12 to 14 hours a day in what I love.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I go to Stanford, and I’m an economics major, not thinking I’m going to do anything with acting. A professor came to the dorm where I lived looking for people to audition for an August Wilson play, ‘Joe Turner’s Come And Gone.’ I gave it a shot, got one of the lead roles in the play.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“The humanity that is given to other people isn’t given to us. There is an expendability that comes along with being African American.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I’m a spiritual person. I do believe in a higher power. I believe God placed me on this planet to be a beneficial presence.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Understand what you want, and want it as badly as you can. Make the stakes for yourself as life-or-death as you can.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Sarah Paulson doesn’t lie. Like, in life. But she doesn’t lie onscreen, and you can’t take your eyes off somebody who always tells the truth. She’s the most honest person I’ve ever met.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Muhammad Ali was the greatest of all time. But what made him even greater was what he did outside the ring.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I do not believe that any particular religion has any monopoly on salvation.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“My mom, who is a very strong Christian woman, will often ask me how some of the characters I play glorify God. Her meaning is that she feels as if every character should be a good Christian character, which is not necessarily my interpretation.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Before I was an actor, I was a fan.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I’ve always been of the mind that what’s mine is mine, and nobody can take it away from me. So when it comes, great. When it goes, great.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“When I finally got the chance to do ‘The People v. O.J. Simpson,’ my peers embraced me with the same attitude. They didn’t make me feel small or insignificant. They treated me as a peer. It was a wonderful experience.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“My dad passed away when I was 10.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I can’t wait to see little white kids dressing up as Black Panther.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Immediately after school, I did a lot of regional theater. I was in Berkeley and Princeton and Minneapolis and all over the country doing wonderful plays for the local audiences.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“The beauty of theater is that you get to live the character from beginning to end without stopping. The natural momentum of the story propels you through in such a way that feels organic.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I think the therapeutic part of acting is allowing myself to step into another human being’s shoes. It allows me the ability to release judgment, if I had any judgment to begin with. It’s an opportunity to understand rather than to stand outside and point fingers.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Not every character that you play is going to be somebody that you like or love, but every character that you play has a story that is worth telling. If you’re not the person to tell it, that’s one thing. But if you don’t want to tell it because you are afraid of the unpopularity of the character, I view that as a missed opportunity.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“When I walked up on stage at the Emmys, and when people stood up, it was a really sort of emotional, overwhelming moment. It was like I had been accepted.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I remember the great work that Norman Lear did. That was an incredible heyday to be a black actor.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“My wife and I will often have conversations about ‘Good Times’ and ‘The Jeffersons’ and ‘Sanford and Son.’ They were doing incredible stuff that was very funny but also very socially conscious.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“One of my favorite things to do, when the ghost light is on and it’s just an empty stage – I’ll let my shadow spread right across the theater, and I just say to myself, ‘For the next few hours, these folks are my responsibility. I get to share in something that is unique.’ It’s like church.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“You can’t play someone and judge them at the same time.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“As a freshman at Stanford University – a young black man – when O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder, it was a joyful moment. I was happy, absolutely. It wasn’t necessarily a matter of whether he was guilty or innocent, per se, it was a matter of finally seeing someone who looked like me have the justice system work in their favor.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Christopher Darden is a very passionate man. He wears his emotion on his sleeve.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I have a certain memory of the way in which my father loved me until I was 10, and it was unconditional and eternal. I get to carry that for the rest of my life, but on a practical level after age 10, it’s just me sort of figuring it out.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“It would be really cool to have my dad here to witness this, to see his grandchildren, to see this woman that I chose to share my life with, to just come walk on set and be like, ‘Ah, this is how you make TV shows and movies.’”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Busy is good, you know. Busy is better than bored, and there’s more recognition. Like, I try to feign the anonymity which I had before ‘O.J.’”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I’m a huge fan of ‘Predator.’”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I went to a college prep high school in St. Louis, Missouri. When I graduated from school, I owned this thing called the Headmaster’s Cup, and the Headmaster’s Cup is for the student who exemplifies the spirit of the institution and is recognized by the faculty and administration.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I do believe that for me, my own personal journey has been one in which my voice has also been appreciated.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I can’t let other people dictate how I see myself.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“Johnnie Cochran was such a heroic figure for getting the acquittal of O.J. Simpson, and the acquittal was such a historical event because it was the first time that I’d seen somebody who looked like me have the criminal justice system work in their favor rather than against.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“We’re all trying to figure out what’s next, what’s best for our families, what’s best for ourselves, and there’s a certain sort of comfort in knowing that you’re not in it by yourself.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I don’t want to try to fool people into thinking that I’m something that I’m not.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I want to be remembered for a body of work so that when the next guy comes up, he could think of Sterling K. Brown in the same way that I think of Andre Braugher and James Earl Jones.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I don’t want to be a flash in the pan. I don’t want people to just remember me for one thing.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I’ve spent so much of my career working intermittently, being busy and then with large swaths of time off, that it became the norm.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“The work of acting, in and of itself, is something that is infinitely enjoyable.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I like working. I think being on set is one of my favorite places in the world.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“There’s something frightening that comes with freedom. And there was something very frightening for a lot of slaves once they were free and were going through Reconstruction. It was like, what do you do now? There was nothing set up.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I love basketball because it’s social, and you’re not even thinking about working out – you’re just playing a game and getting great exercise at the same time.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“My work schedule doesn’t always accommodate my workout schedule, but I make do with what time I’ve got.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I try to drink a lot of water – it hydrates, curbs appetite, etc.”

― Sterling K. Brown

“I’m always trying to find ways to evolve. Evolution, for me, is a very spiritual thing, getting closer to the creator, closer to God, and becoming a better version of yourself.”

― Sterling K. Brown