Regina King Quotations

My mother was a single mom, and most of the women I know are strong.

We know that's the bottom line: if money is made, the powers that be pay attention.

You don't know what unconditional love is. You may say you do, but if you don't have a child, you don't know what that is. But when you experience it, it is the most fulfilling ever.

I stay in tune with my family and God.

My biggest challenge will be to play the totally submissive woman. It takes a toll on you when you play someone who's far removed from your personality.

I'm just really thankful to have the chance to portray a character you don't see every day.

I learned a lot from my Mom. My favorite lesson: remember there is no such thing as a certain way to parent and to remember that you are learning along with your child - it's ok to make mistakes.

If your woman is asleep every time you get home, shes just really tired. Of you.

I never really loved school through junior high, but then I started running track my freshman year, and I was just like, 'Wow, this is cool!

It's funny that until I actually met my husband, I never thought I'd get married.

I know in my own marriage I stayed in it to provide my son with what I thought was a stable background and to give him what I thought was the family life a child should have with two parents. But that isnt always the best way, and it took me taking my son to therapy after the divorce to really see it.

I love my city and I feel like the majority of the people that are in the city are people from other cities. So I think that L.A. sometimes might get a bad rap because it's known to be so Hollywood-oriented and then underneath that you have crime. But that's really the case in pretty much any major city that you go to.

It's incredibly hard out there for women of color.

Children at certain ages have distinct actions, and boys at certain ages have a particular way of acting too.

Especially in this industry, women challenge men much more now because we're saying, 'We can do it, too.

I watch ESPN all day. If you come into my trailer, ESPN is on. That's the first thing I do when I leave the set.

I've tried to be flexible in my career by doing a little bit of everything and that's worked for me.

People love to see themselves on screen in a way that makes sense and seems on point.

There's a difference between actresses of color and actresses not of color. If you look at how big my movies are.

You always make a film with the hope that all types of people will want to see your work and that it doesn't matter about your color, but unfortunately it still does.

I want to live a full life - period.

A Modern Mom to me is not always someone that juggles a career and family. A Modern Mom is a woman who takes care of herself on the inside and the outside.

When you see all the suits in the room, everybody in the room has on suits, you know, the women, too. We're not wearing dresses and chiffon and we're not as fun as we used to be.

I create my own backstory regardless of if I'm told something about the background or not. There's always more that you can develop in your head that makes a character more layered, more honest.

I try to eat well, but I don't deny myself the foods I love. I just eat them in moderation.

I try to turn most things into an exercise. Sometimes, I can't get a workout in, so I will do things like park further away at the grocery store or take the stairs. It may not be much, but I've convinced myself it does something. Mind over matter. My regular workouts consist of hiking, Cardio Barre, and light weight training.

My husband didn't want the divorce, but I did. So there was a lot of bitterness initially. Once we got to the space where we understood that we have the most important thing in the world in common; no one else shared that commonality. Our son is priceless, and in order to give him the best, we have to be better to each other. Although we are still divorced, we still call each other "family." It was a journey to get there, but it's a beautiful place to be.

We play different people - our art form is performance art - so unless you're playing the same type of person, I don't know if you could improve or make it worse.

I've always been selective about materials I choose anyways. The incoming calls haven't been projects that I necessarily want to do. Now I can always be called "Emmy winner Regina King."

I recognize the amount of time that it takes as a director. I made the choice to stop taking roles outside of L.A. because I didn't want to miss any of my child's life.

I can work inside the boundaries of Erika Murphy, or whoever the character is. It's fun to create somebody that's not you, that doesn't exist.

I don't think something is a failure if you put your all into it. I'm a big fan of the saying, "Nothing beats a failure but a try."

And what happens a lot of times when - let's just speak specifically white and black - when white or black people feel misunderstood when it comes to talking about race, they immediately get defensive.

And just because someone doesn't understand doesn't mean they don't want to.

It's an honest place to be if you don't understand someone else's experience, but there's no way for the other to understand if a conversation or an explanation isn't made.

And there's also not enough films that are more of a imitation of what real life looks like.

And, for example, like, when you're having the conversation with your child about getting their driver's license. Well, a white family - their biggest fear is just that you're driving safely and that they're minding the rules of the road, whereas a black family - their biggest fear is that their child is going to get pulled over and treated unfairly for a reason that they won't understand.

But, once again, when I said I'm so grateful for my mom just being adamant about me staying in public school - that is what allowed me to be exposed to so many different types of people. I went to a high school that was by the beach. I elected to do bussing my junior high school years. And my first year of high school, I would take the bus from my neighborhood to the beach schools. And at those schools, you had such a mix of so many types of kids.

And once I was in college, about - maybe the end of my first semester of my sophomore year, I realized that college just was not my jam and that I felt like I was learning more when is actually on set. And I think a lot of that had to do with - I was working while I was in college. I was on "227," so I didn't get a chance to really be immersed in the culture of my school.

I had been going on auditions and things like that since I was probably 10-11 years old.

I went to public - I graduated from publics - Westchester High. I'm a product of LA Unified.

I would like to believe that most people don't get married anticipating divorce. When I reached that crossroad, I felt like such a failure. After years of therapy together, I realized that staying together was emotionally destructive.

"Legally Blonde 2" wasn't written specifically for a black woman.

Men. You can't live with them, you can't... no. That's about it.

"Southland" was not written for a black woman.

The good news for me is that I have an amazing team behind me, and they've been with me for 20 years now - almost 20 years. And they have seen me as an actress, not necessarily just a black actress. So I have been lucky enough for them to see me that way.

When you look at "American Crime" and you have the character Terri LaCroix is a pharmaceutical executive - why does that character always have to be white?

Race is a very sensitive subject.

I think I've been lucky in the regard to have a team that sees me as an artist.