Zazie Beetz

It's fascinating working with young children. You have to improvise around them, and they're moving around and doing stuff, and you have to be real with them.

The version of me on the Internet, it's not me. It's one portion.

Bad bread is the one thing I refuse. I need good bread.

I wish I was a morning person.

My father is German; my mother is African-American. Growing up, I visited my grandparents in Berlin a lot. I would not see any other person of color for three weeks. People would stare. They would say things like, 'Oh, you look like chocolate - I want to eat you up!'

In the United States, if you're African-American, it can be assumed that your family has been here for generations. In Europe, colonialism is much more alive, and it's assumed you're from Nigeria or Senegal.

When the Berlin Wall came down, my dad left to visit the U.S. He met my mom at this summer camp where they were both working, so I grew up between Washington Heights and Germany speaking two languages.

I don't know how people say exercising is addictive.

I worry about not being able to be myself day to day. But I know people way more famous than me who have been able to do that.

At home in my room, I'm funny, but if I'm commissioned to be that, I don't feel very funny.

I've had acting teachers say, 'If you want to do anything else but act, that means you're not an actor,' which I think is stupid!

Despite my career, so much of my life has been dictated by what I'm afraid of: fear that I am not talented. Fear that people will finally realize that I am a boring individual who doesn't have many ambitions beyond starting a family 'at a good time' in life.

For me, fear manifests itself in snoozing and inactivity. I just become so sleepy, any time of day, when something needs to be done. I sometimes go days without responding to texts or reading books or being able to process much of anything beyond the sun slowly creeping through my living room windows.

I remind myself that, though there was a time anxiety might have stopped me, today is not that day. And so, by checking in with myself, minute by minute, I push myself through.

I used to cry on planes. I don't anymore. It probably took almost a hundred agonizing flights to get there. Now, when I take off, a smile quivers on the corner of my lips.

I'm pretty picky about my hair, so I end up always styling it myself.

I feel like I pull inspiration, in general, from how I feel on a day.

Growing up, my aunts would always put in hair ties and bows and all kinds of stuff, and I always hated it.

I feel like, every six months, I learn my hair or my skin anew and find a new thing that I like to do, and then I abandon it and move on.

Walking in the street, particularly in a city like New York, every single day, I am reminded of how objectified women can be. Being catcalled every day, multiple times a day, all the time... it just constantly happens.

I've begun feeling that my responsibility is to the Earth. Our generation's war is climate change, so I've really been modifying how I eat and what I eat.

Agriculture is one of the biggest causes of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Cars? Planes? Trains? Nope. Cow farts.

I do wonder if it's my responsibility to spread a message of environmental awareness or political awareness or just, like, don't be racist or whatever, but I don't want to be the person who's like, 'Everyone be vegan forever!'

One day, I'd like to tackle a biopic. I grew up very influenced by Josephine Baker, Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone.

I actually didn't think I was going to do TV because I don't really watch TV. I'm a little bit pretentious, and I do these little indie movies, so I envisioned that more as the path for myself.