Top 70 Laurence Fishburne Quotes

I was in a movie with Marlon Brando. Now, I didn’t have any scenes with Marlon Brando, but I had scenes with Martin Sheen and was around Dennis Hopper, who was a child actor in the studio system and was enamored of James Dean, as was Martin, and they were all sort of disciples of Brando.

It’s important for a lot of young black males to value swagger over intelligence. Swagger is important, but intelligence must come before the swagger.

I actually had the opportunity to stand at the lectern in the Supreme Court and face the justices, which was really a powerful thing for me.

Jesse Eisenberg, this little nebbishy guy, as Lex Luthor? For me, that’s a genius move.

If you like rock and roll, if you like rhythm and blues, if you like jazz, if you like hip-hop, you might be black-ish.

I have taken care of my gift, and because I’ve taken care of my gift, I feel like I’ve been continually and constantly blessed to get to do wonderful things.

My production company, what we are trying to do is I’m trying to create content that speaks to me, and it’s not one color. It’s not one size fits all.

I don’t believe in acting teachers for me, so it’s God‘s joke that he gave me a best friend who’s an acting teacher.

Obviously, after ‘The Matrix,’ it was a case of, ‘OK, I did that. What’s next?’ I mean, it’s always like that, but more so this time. How do I change it up? How do I keep it interesting for myself?

It’s my luck that I was born a bit of an old soul, and it’s served me well.

I’m passionate about all the things I do, really.

Special effects are characters. Special effects are essential elements. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

‘Apocalypse Now’ was my craziest experience ever. I was 14 years old, and I’d lied about my age to get the role. I haven‘t had another film top it.

John Wick is not a guy that asks for help, so when he goes to somebody for help, whoever that is, you know he’s a serious cat.

I think any city that does the Olympics takes on the world and has to grow and has to kind of assimilate all sorts of folks.

I return to the stage first and foremost because I’m an actor, and I love it.

You can’t be bad when you’re working with a kid. They have the instincts that all great actors have.

I’ve been around long enough now and have learned to be flexible enough to know that every movie isn’t going to be ‘Apocalypse Now,’ and every director doesn’t have to be Stanley Kubrick.

I try to meditate.

I believe in my children. I believe in human beings. I believe in the goodness that is in human beings. I believe in many, many things that I cannot prove. I believe that there’s the world of the seen and the world of the unseen.

I didn’t have much of a childhood, but that’s O.K. I have a livelihood.

I ain’t afraid of germs, man. And I ain’t afraid of getting sick.

Anytime we’re talking about Thurgood Marshall, that’s a good thing, I think, because it gives us an opportunity to go back, look at the history, and recognize what his contributions were.

When I think of Othello, I think of a poet-warrior. Let me say that again – a romantic warrior. And I think I have those qualities in common with him.

I work with my instincts. I don’t have a process that I learned in an acting class whereby I break a script down or whereby I do a certain kind of research.

My mother is quite a woman. She would push me, and when I got tired of her pushing, I’d say: ‘Leave me alone. Don’t push so much.’

We are three dimensional beings: body, mind, spirit.

Things have become considerably better for men of colour since I was born. But I’d say that we’ll be really getting somewhere when things get better for women of colour.

Doing ‘CSI: N.Y.’ is not ‘CSI.’ Doing ‘CSI: Miami‘ is not ‘CSI: N.Y.,’ it’s ‘CSI: Miami.’ It has a very, very specific tone. It has a very specific look. It has a specific way in which they tell their stories that’s different from ‘CSI: N.Y.’ and ‘CSI.’

I was a child actor but not a child star.

Doing theater makes you feel like a real actor.

As a movie star, you get good tables at restaurants.

I don’t necessarily go out and try to do something that’s going to be just something that will please the audience. I’m not interested in doing something where I get the most people to come see the movie at the same time and they get the biggest explosion. I’m not interested in that.

‘The Fugitive Kind,’ ‘Rope,’ ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ – I watched all these as a way of reminding myself that you can do a movie based on a play. You can do a movie that stays in one place for a long stretch.

I’m not dyeing my hair and trying to pretend I’m 40. That’s not going to work for me.

Some characters need to be more performance-orientated; some, you have to be still.

I think I’ve certainly learned a lot of lessons in humility and continue to work on that part of myself.

I learned tolerance at a very early age.

Hiding a talent is not exclusive to any one particular group of people: young, old, black, white, Latin. It doesn’t matter. It’s universal. The idea that you have a gift or talent is always kind of threatening.

I try to stay in shape a little bit, but I don’t obsess about it.

In order to be the best version of yourself, you have to dedicate time, effort, and support to other people who need it.

I carry a lot of feminine energy as well as masculine energy, and that’s the hit that people are getting. That vulnerable thing is not what we assume with black males. You get it, and then they cease to become scary. They become human. You cease to have a bogeyman.

I’m left-handed: I can think and feel at the same time. My feminine side is very highly developed.

All I know is, I’m trying to do things that are a little different whenever I can.

I have a man cave somewhere in California – a totally undisclosed location where manly things occur. There are motorcycles, there are secret doors and passageways. Women are welcome, but they must knock.

You can’t go looking for another one of those franchises. You only ever get one of those. You get ‘Stars Wars‘; you get ‘Indiana Jones‘ or get ‘The Matrix.’ I’ve had my franchise.

I love the opportunity to use my full range, and so playing in the comedy ‘Black-ish’ gives me the opportunity to show my lighter side, and playing in this beautiful, elegant horror story of ‘Hannibal,’ I get to use my darker and more cerebral side. It’s really wonderful.

We don’t really see a lot of war movies about the people that are left behind, dealing with the deaths of those who serve and the sacrifices they make.

My vocation is I do what I do. I’m an actor; that’s what I do.

I don’t ever get to the point where anything is old hat.

I’ve played a lot of bad guys, ’cause that was the only work I could get. People saw my face and went ‘oooh’.

When I was ten, I did a play at the Henry Street Settlement Playhouse, Charles Fuller‘s first play. He went on to write ‘A Soldier‘s Story,’ among other things. I realized, ‘Oh, I can be anything doing this.’

The 50s are the age of elegance. That’s kind of my intention when I get dressed: casual elegance.

I didn’t want to be a big star. I wanted to be a really good actor.

As an actor, Coppola trained me. That was my training ground.

Paulo Coelho’s ‘The Alchemist’ means a lot to me.

Philanthropic work reminds you of everyone‘s common humanity, and that’s really the common denominator for everyone.

I have heard a lot of people talk about this grind of series television. I have not seen it yet.

I think everyone is very surprised at how ‘Matrix’ has become the pop culture phenomenon that it is.

After ‘Othello,’ it was, like, ‘I can stop acting. I have played one of the great characters in the English language. I feel I have played him well and honorably. I have nothing to prove anymore.’

Mine were informal mentors. They were all in my working life.

Acting and philanthropy are braided together. I’ve tried to seek out things that speak not just specifically to the community that created me, but that speak in a way that’s universal and all of humanity celebrates.

Most of us are afraid of our success, that we will actually be great.

My company, Cinema Gypsy, produced a podcast, ‘Bronzeville,’ in conjunction with Larenz Tate and his brothers that we’re developing into a television show. It deals with a very tight-knit African-American community in Chicago in 1947 and people who run a numbers wheel.

I always wanted to play a cowboy. I just didn’t get to do it the way I thought I would.

I think there’s going to be many special episodes of ‘Blackish.’

The commercial I did for Kia was hilarious and unexpected, so that, I think, is also another way of signaling to the audience that there’s more to me than Morpheus.

I see that I have, as part of my stock in trade, a very regal personality and carriage. I see that I have a kind of strength, a kind of command, and a kind of power that one would associated with a monarch.

I had two times in my life where I wanted to give up everything I worked for, but God gave me a job.

What I continue to learn as a parent is to be mindful of the fact that I am responsible for being the parent that my children need me to be and not necessarily the parent I want to be.