Courtney B. Vance

Family is funny, and so it was not an unnatural thing for me, growing up, not to know anything about my dad or about the Vance side of our family.

Growing up, my dad and my mom were there for my sister and I.

Our parents didn't let us watch a lot of television growing up. We had Disney on Sunday nights, and at 8:30, they were like, 'Turn it off! Go to bed!'

Wes Anderson is a perfectionist, so you have to just be ready to try it this way, try it this way, try it that way, and then try it this way. And then, once you think you've got it all and it's done, then you're going to be called back in two or three months so you can try it that way and try it this way. You've got to give him all of it.

I remember I was up for the role of Jim in 'Huck Finn,' and because I went to Harvard and Yale, they didn't think I would be able to play a slave. I said, 'Oh, please.' I had to go in there and prove to them that I wasn't too intelligent to play a slave.

I would love to take a crack at 'Long Day's Journey Into Night.'

I love Tom Cruise. I've been a Tom Cruise fan for a long time.

When actors have the opportunity to play a larger-than-life icon - my wife did it with Tina Turner, and Jamie Foxx did it with Ray Charles - you have to make a decision how you go in. What do you start with? Where do you begin?

The life of an editor is not a glamorous one. You're a fixer; you make things better.

We have to give people dreams; we have to give people hope. In terms of government, in terms of society, that's our goal. You can't have a group of people that don't dream, that see themselves as dead or in jail.

I've done a lot of Shakespeare as a young man; I was involved with Shakespeare and Company.

It goes back in the black community that the police are not your friends. That's an old, old, deep understanding that we have, that it's going to take a lot to undo that in our minds.