Ving Rhames quotes:

I can always do theater; I can do Ibsen, I can do Macbeth, I can do Chekhov, I can do Moliere, Othello, I can do Richard III.

I do fish, and as a matter of fact, I used to do a lot of deep sea fishing, but as far as going into the water, I don't go out deep into the water.

I'm from New York, and yet I've done only one film executive-produced by Spike Lee and have never done a film that Spike Lee directed. I've never done a film that Keenan Wayans has directed, or Bill Duke.

How do you cut off the human side and just maintain being professional? So what I've done is I've incorporated that with Kojak - there's times when he allows the human condition, the human experience, to integrate into him as a professional.

I'm a God-fearing man, and I know the only reason why I am here going from poverty to where I am now is God has His hand on my life. I tell people, 'I didn't choose acting; God chose me to act.'

I spent three days with Don King, and I interviewed 45 people. I studied his speech, his mannerisms. He invited me to a couple of fights, and I watched him.

I grew up in Harlem in New York, very rough, urban environment, and so what I found is that, if I can have kids travel to different places, countries, areas, it can expand their minds.

The more versatile you make yourself, the more work you get. Training makes you more versatile and ultimately gets you more work. Julliard taught me that.

Quite honestly I never had a desire to be an actor. I tell people, I did not choose acting; acting chose me. I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I wanted to play football. In about 9th grade an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He said I should audition for a performing arts high school so I did on a whim. I got accepted.

Using the Africanist model, each generation should take the family name to a higher place. My father's folks were sharecroppers in South Carolina. He went to Harlem. They were still poor, but they moved up. If my parents didn't do this and offer me this background, I wouldn't be here.

You get Don King's point of view in what is almost a Shakespearean, classical technique. He comes across almost like a lovable rogue, like Iago in 'Othello' or Richard III. He's doing all these bad things, but I kind of like him. It's like 'Pulp Fiction': Everybody's a bad guy, yet you like them.

The only difference between working on a huge-budget film and a lesser-budget film, is the quality of lunch and dinner.

You can feel I am whatever you want to feel I am. God knows who I am, and I know who I am.

When I think of the trials and tribulations that black men go through in America and that black artists went through, I feel very privileged.

If someone's intimidated by me, that's something they have to deal with. When I walk down the streets of New York and an old woman grabs her purse when I pass by, I'm not going to give it a whole lot of energy because I'm not in the wrong. I'm a millionaire, and I'm not thinking about grabbing an old woman's purse.

I've always been interested in cross-cultural exchange with the youth.

I don't give Hollywood the power to limit me. Only God can limit me.

My approach to the work is the same, whether I had the lead or a supporting role. I consider myself a character actor in the true sense of the word. Unless I'm doing my autobiography, I'm playing a character.

Really, if you get in the ring and box with someone for real, I don't think it is a sport. As far as professional fighters, you are literally putting your life on the line.

Since I graduated college, all I have ever done for a living was acting.

God has blessed me with a certain amount of presence and a certain amount of charisma.

I graduated college in 1983, so that's 32 years, and all I've done for a living is act or commercials or voiceovers. So I have nothing to complain about.

I never grew up thinking I wanted to be a quote-unquote star or anything. My thing was just feeling blessed to be able to make my living acting.

Rosewood is what Americans did to Americans. We have to hold the mirror up... and look at ourselves. Sometimes that's an ugly sight. And sometimes you have to go through that pain - both black America and white America - so we can finally find some racial harmony.

Since God is the foundation of my life, anything that streams from that can only be positive.

I try to base my life on the principles of Christ. I try to raise my family on the principles of Christ. I don't know if that makes me religious.

Snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef, I saw something - I don't know what it was to this day. My mind couldn't relate to what it was... If I saw it and knew it was a shark, I wouldn't be as afraid, but I saw something that looked prehistoric, and I haven't been snorkeling since.

I find it so strange that I throw people off-center.

I've always been taught to just play the truth of the situation. If comedy comes out of that, or drama, whatever comes out of it, at least I'm playing the truth of the moment-to-moment reality.

I try to allow the spirit of the character to live through me. That's the only way I know how to approach acting. I have to live it.

Don King is as American as apple pie. He is America.

When I look at the world, I recognize that unfortunately, it sometimes takes an atrocity like 9/11 to force us to come together.

I grew up in Harlem, and the kids used to tease me. You know that song 'Bingo'? Well, they used to sing, 'V-i-n-g-o, and Vingo was his name-o.'

I was more interested in playing sports than acting. I didn't take acting too seriously until the end of my junior year.

I've known Laurence Fishburne for about twenty years.

I grew up in a poverty-stricken neighborhood, but I didn't really know I was a deprived, poverty-stricken child until the media made me aware of it.

Mission: Impossible' is basically entertainment, and for what it is, it's fine. I don't think most actors become actors to do that type of film.

Mission: Impossible' is fun. But for myself as an artist, I'm really more concerned with the human condition, the human experience, especially from an African American point of view.

I don't know if I hadn't grown up poor, and in the neighborhood I did, if I would have had that much to bring to my art form. I call upon my past with characters.

You don't have to make, you know, $3 Million dollars a movie, or $20 Million dollars a movie, but if you make a living doing what you love doing, then that's success to me.

I don't need dialogue to convey emotion or thoughts to my audience.

In about 9th grade, an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He said I should audition for a performing arts high school, so I did on a whim. I got accepted. Then I got accepted at the Julliard School, and by then, I was serious about it.

I like to say that I didn't choose acting - acting chose me.

The more you do a stunt, the more you increase the risk of something happening.

Are you intimidated by me? Because if you're intimidated by me, that's something you'll have to deal with.

For me, acting was a way of releasing all of this stuff that I had inside - and a way for me to tell the stories of the people I knew, so that their spirit could live through me.

I saw how, when my brother smoked reefer, it made my mother cry. He was 16 at the time. And I saw that she broke down and cried. I never wanted to hurt my mother, so I kept away from drugs.

I was never a struggling actor, for which I feel very blessed.

It can always get worse.