I think everything within film and TV helps inform every other role, so it's definitely helped my acting, being on the other side of the camera, and it's just given me a whole new appreciation for how hard everybody in the crew works.

I've never felt like I can't do anything because I'm a woman. Never, ever. I was privileged enough to be surrounded by women that were at the top of their game and just freakin' doing it.

When something catastrophic happens to someone you love, or a situation arises that affects people you love the most, if that's the first time you've been in that position, you never really know what to do.

When you find that person that's your person, you see all the good bits and the bad bits and love them completely anyway.

You could say I was born into entrepreneurship. My grandmother, who was from Sierra Leone, was left to raise four children in the 1940s in a rural village in West Africa after becoming a young widow. To support her family, she made natural skin and hair care preparations and sold them primarily to missionaries and villagers.

I cohabited for 20 years with my longtime husband and father of my two now-teen daughters in a stable family household.

The family I'm from, well, no one had their name on big buildings. My family were builders of a different kind. Builders in the way most American families are. They used whatever tools they had - whatever God gave them - and whatever life in America provided - and built better lives and better futures for their kids.

With every movie, I am trying in my own little way to do whatever I can to change the way female characters have been presented and how an actress that comes from a family outside the industry is making an impact.