Courtney B. Vance

I get up early, go to bed late, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. And I pray a lot.

It's one of the roles of a lifetime to be able to play someone like Mr. Cochran who was so influential. People knew about his work in regard to police brutality. He was very much a staple in the community - someone who, if there was trouble, people knew, 'Go get Johnnie Cochran.'

We were raised in the black community not to trust the police, and I believe, in the white community, they were raised to actually be a policeman.

Around 1969, my family had just bought a house in a lower-middle-class white neighborhood two blocks away from school. Then, all of a sudden, all the white people left the neighborhood and the school.

There's a lot going on in the Bassett-Vance household, a lot of balls in the air.

I've done a lot of movies, but my favorite was 'Blind Faith.'

It was a natural for me to end up in the theater because I'd done a lot of reading about it.

My parents were all about education. My mother was a librarian - she retired after 30 years - and she made sure that we were always at museums, that we went to plays.

I've done a lot of theater, and I know that it's a different audience each time who doesn't know the story, and we have to tell it.

When I was a senior in high school, I did an internship with a law firm. And it was very clear that I did not have what it took to do that kind of work.