Chadwick Boseman Quotes

I played Little League baseball, but I also played basketball. Basketball was my primary sport. When you play basketball seriously, a lot of times, through the summer season, you continue playing. So that replaced me playing baseball.

- Chadwick Boseman

It was a big thing for me to read black writers. 'Fences,' by August Wilson. James Baldwin's 'Amen Corner.' 'The Fire Next Time.' 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X,' of course.

- Chadwick Boseman

I have my own personal masticating juicer at home. I sort of picked it up from friends a few years ago, and it just gives me more energy. Mostly green juice. Spinach, celery, kale, green apples, lemon, sometimes ginger - you know, like, nasty, euuugghhhh!

- Chadwick Boseman

I'd taken, like, maybe some African dance classes a couple of times, but I wasn't a musical theater person at all.

- Chadwick Boseman

I don't read reviews, but I do get feedback from my peers and people I know, like other actors and directors and producers.

- Chadwick Boseman

I'm from Anderson, S.C., but I grew up in the South. So I know what it is to ride to school and have Confederate flags flying from trucks in front of me and behind me, to see a parking lot full of people with Confederate flags and know what that means. I've been stopped by police for no reason.

- Chadwick Boseman

I like ambiguity because you may be the villain in someone else's story and the hero in your own, and I think very often, African-American characters are either one thing or the other. You shouldn't have to be perfectly good or perfectly bad. You don't even have to be magical.

- Chadwick Boseman

As an African-American actor, a lot of our stories haven't been told.

- Chadwick Boseman

Some people would view Jackie Robinson as a very safe African-American, a docile figure who had a tendency to try to get along with everyone, and when you look at his history, you learn that he has this fire that allows him to take this punishment but also figure out savvy ways of giving it back.

- Chadwick Boseman

There are some stories I want to tell that I think it'd be cool to see an African-American dude do.

- Chadwick Boseman

People of African descent, most of us grew up accepting and loving Spider-Man. I still love Spider-Man. I still love the Incredible Hulk. I still have those characters that were white role models, superheroes, heroes - whatever you want to call it. You basically had no choice but to accept those.

- Chadwick Boseman

Nobody has to give me permission to write.

- Chadwick Boseman

There's nothing more stressful than your stomach growling. But interestingly enough, some of my best writing came when I was poor and hungry - living off water and oatmeal, mind clear.

- Chadwick Boseman

The only difference between a hero and the villain is that the villain chooses to use that power in a way that is selfish and hurts other people.

- Chadwick Boseman

Baseball players need strength but also the ability to make fast-paced, explosive movements, so their training is all about strengthening the tendons around the bone and the joint so you don't tear the muscles from the bones.

- Chadwick Boseman

We live in a world where people can ridicule you at the push of the button. They can question you at the push of a button.

- Chadwick Boseman

When I got out of school, I didn't really understand the differences in the different aspects of the business. For example, doing a play - where does that take you versus, you know, concentrating on independent films? You might have one thing in your head, but the things you're doing don't really lead down the right road, necessarily.

- Chadwick Boseman

One of the first things I was taught as an actor was, 'Don't judge the character.'

- Chadwick Boseman

Every year, Hollywood is looking for that new, white leading man and new white starlet that audiences fall in love with. But they're not looking for the next Denzel Washington, Will Smith or Sidney Poitier.

- Chadwick Boseman

I love all types of music. Jazz, classical, blues, rock, hip-hop. I often write scripts to instrumentals like a hip-hop artist. Music inspires me to write. It's either music playing or completely silent. Sometimes distant sound fuels you. In New York there's always a buzzing beneath you.

- Chadwick Boseman

Actors can have a fair amount of hate for each other, so when another actor says, 'You did your thing,' or 'That was inspiring,' you can't really ask for more than that.

- Chadwick Boseman

I wasn't a comic book geek as a kid. I read some, but it was just like, 'Oh, I have this comic book here.' It wasn't like I was collecting them.

- Chadwick Boseman

I would love to have an ocean of love right now. That said, the number-one rule of acting is, 'Do not seek approval from the audience.' People don't realize that. You can't do stuff to get applause. You have to live in the truth.

- Chadwick Boseman

There's the phrase of 'making America great again,' but how did we make America great? Who did it? It was Thurgood Marshall who did it. It was Thurgood Marshall who made America live up to its constitution, to its dream. He pushed the envelope to make sure that we were equal.

- Chadwick Boseman

I think there's a difference between a working actor, a movie star and a celebrity. They're all three different things.

- Chadwick Boseman

I would go through these cycles of being really, really focused on work, and not being around anyone, to being around everyone. And that could be distracting. It was nothing or everything.

- Chadwick Boseman

I would love to play Jimi Hendrix.

- Chadwick Boseman

Colonialism is the cousin of slavery.

- Chadwick Boseman

Even after I became involved in theater and involved in TV and film, I had this sort of idea that Hollywood was off limits. There was something about L.A., the mystique of it and fear of it.

- Chadwick Boseman

I think the most stressful time of my life was when I was in New York, and I didn't have money to pay my rent.

- Chadwick Boseman

For me, being a complete artist means not necessarily just being in front of the camera, but being behind the camera or being the originator or creator of something.

- Chadwick Boseman

I'm an artist. Artists don't need permission to work. Regardless of whether I'm acting or not, I write. I write when I'm tired in fact, because I believe your most pure thoughts surface.

- Chadwick Boseman

I know that baseball players have certain rituals or habits that they develop, because sometimes it becomes somewhat superstitious if they get on a streak and want to do the same thing over and over again.

- Chadwick Boseman

I'm not one of those guys who walks around with a flip phone who doesn't want to be connected. There are times when I'm tech-friendly, and there are times when I personally do want to shut everything off because I'm more creative when I shut off.

- Chadwick Boseman

The thing I love about Marvel in general is that they deal with people. They deal with the human being first: Who is inside the suit? Who is the person that obtained this power or this ability?

- Chadwick Boseman

I majored in directing. However, I did spend some time at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, so I am somewhat well-versed in African Studies.

- Chadwick Boseman

Once you start getting big roles as an actor, everything pays. So what are you making decisions on? It's about the director or the script or whatever. But before you reach that point, you're taking jobs with, say, a theater company, in spite of the fact that it's not paying your bills.

- Chadwick Boseman

I watched movies, obviously, just like anybody else, but there was nothing to make me think, 'I'm going to go to L.A. and become a movie star,' or anything like that.

- Chadwick Boseman

I remember my first agent telling me - because they found me as an actor, but I was probably more interested in writing and maybe directing - they were like, 'Well, you can't do both things.' And I was like, 'I'm gonna show you.'

- Chadwick Boseman

I'm the kind of guy who comes home and checks scores for everything. I'm a sports fan in general, so I pretty much keep up with who's ahead in a division and everything that's going on.

- Chadwick Boseman

As soon as I came to L.A., things immediately shifted for me. I was now actually here with the people who were making the decisions; I wasn't out in New York sending in tapes to L.A.

- Chadwick Boseman

In television you don't have a lot of time to spend with the role or the script. Typically you get a script a week prior to shooting. Sometimes it's even less time, not enough time to dream about the role.

- Chadwick Boseman

When I met Rachel Robinson for the first time, she is a regal woman, and she was like a grandmother in that first meeting.

- Chadwick Boseman

I was raised in a sort of village. I have a huge family, and I think there is strength in that. It helped me to deal with some of the complications of living in the South because I always felt like I belonged, no matter what.

- Chadwick Boseman

They should probably have a James Brown aerobic tape. You would lose a lot of weight.

- Chadwick Boseman

I try to look at every role the same way, regardless of whether the character is real or the character is a fantasy. I always start from myself, because you have to know yourself first.

- Chadwick Boseman

You're not free unless you can show the good and the bad, all sides of them. So to me, when I play a character, it's important that I can show every aspect of them.

- Chadwick Boseman

Sometimes when you're acting, you only need a little bit of something to sort of channel or, you know, transport into a place.

- Chadwick Boseman

Guys are natural problem solvers - they like to have strategies.

- Chadwick Boseman

I thought I would draw or paint or be an architect. I was always drawing portraits. My mom put me in art classes in the summer.

- Chadwick Boseman

When they call you and say, 'So you want to play 'Black Panther?'' if you know what 'Black Panther' is, there's no way in the world you're going to say no because there's a lot of opportunity for magic to happen.

- Chadwick Boseman

You have to cherish things in a different way when you know the clock is ticking, you are under pressure.

- Chadwick Boseman

When you're doing a character, you want to know the full landscape. You want to know them spiritually, mentally and physically.

- Chadwick Boseman

Each movie you do about a real person is like a painting, and you choose certain things in the painting that you want to pull out and you want to show.

- Chadwick Boseman

In TV, you're basically shooting an episode in 10 to 14 days; 14 days is a luxury situation. And in film, you have anywhere from a month to three months, or it can be even longer than that, depending on what the production is.

- Chadwick Boseman

I'm not so keen on letting my car drive itself.

- Chadwick Boseman

I studied at Howard. I studied at Oxford.

- Chadwick Boseman

I can definitely dance, but pedestrian dancing.

- Chadwick Boseman

When it comes down to it, I'd rather have an action figure than a Golden Globe.

- Chadwick Boseman

I can't even imagine something being more fun than playing James Brown onstage.

- Chadwick Boseman

When you play characters, you shouldn't just be putting on their characteristics - you should be finding it inside yourself.

- Chadwick Boseman

I'm not really interested in being a superhero. That's not a box I've been trying to check off.

- Chadwick Boseman

I don't have a smart house. My house is very dumb.

- Chadwick Boseman

I said yes too much. I said yes to certain projects that weren't for me. It was somebody else's vision and somebody else's dream and somebody else's artistic endeavor, but it didn't necessarily fit in my grand scheme.

- Chadwick Boseman

A superhero movie is only as great as its villains.

- Chadwick Boseman

I might have had too many friends in my twenties.

- Chadwick Boseman

I got scars from every film I've done, every TV show.

- Chadwick Boseman

People don't want to experience change; they just want to wake up, and it's different.

- Chadwick Boseman

I started out as a writer and a director. I started acting because I wanted to know how to relate to the actors. When people ask me what I do, I don't really say that I'm an actor, because actors often wait for someone to give them roles.

- Chadwick Boseman

The industry looks for white actors and actresses, but it's not the same for black actors. We have to really put the work in.

- Chadwick Boseman

As a director, it is important to understand the actor's process.

- Chadwick Boseman

People have said, 'You don't need to do any more biopics. You don't need to play any more real people.' I don't agree with that.

- Chadwick Boseman

When you make movies, it's such an important period of time, when you look back at each one of them. You want to be able to say that you did something that was a challenge and that changed you.

- Chadwick Boseman

The projects that I end up doing, that I want to be involved with in any way, have always been projects that will be impactful, for the most part, to my people - to black people.

- Chadwick Boseman