Quotes

Over the years, and just like all celebrities, Forest Whitaker has been in a lot of interviews. On this page you can find some of his most famous quotes. Put together, they should give you insight into the person behind the actor … this is the way he thinks!

• “Let us be worthy of those who pin their hopes on us. May God bless you with success.”

• “Happy the days that have been consecrated to the remembrance of God, and blessed the hours which have been spent in praise of Him Who is the All-Wise.”

• “After about ten years of study I ended up feeling so full and blessed that I wanted to give some of what was given to me back to humanity.”

• “In our current state of human development it remains unclear whether we will correct one of life’s greatest tragedies, namely, the inability to appreciate a blessing until it is lost.”

• “Well, by accepting that sex is a physical manifestation of God, and that is not a sin—it is a blessing.”

• “Blessed are the Pure in Heart, for they shall see GOD.”

• “Invoke the Father, implore God often, and he will give to you. Blessed is he who has seen you with Him when He was proclaimed among the angels, and glorified among the saints; yours is life.”

• “He’s amazing. He’s a really dedicated father. I feel very blessed that every day I wake up and I live with my favourite people in the world, as well as my best friend.”

• “This was really what I was supposed to be doing, and it was a great blessing to have discovered this, and to be doing what was God’s will for your life.”

• “May the LORD, the God of your fathers, increase you a thousand times and bless you as he has promised!”

• “If you can be a blessing to somebody else, you’re sowing a seed for God to help you.”

• “I want to be blessed so I can build orphanages. Blessed so I can build hospitals and do other things with our finances.”

• “As a kid, I never had dreams of becoming an actor or director. Even when I was already working professionally, it took me a long time to know whether this was what I really wanted to be. Now I feel comfortable about what I’m doing, but I see that I can continue to make it better, that I can create a deeper balance in my life, and I’m still working on that. I didn’t plan for things to turn out this way at all. But I have to say, I feel good about it. I do.” – 1998 quote on his career.

• “As an actor, I have always wanted to do characters that would help me find my connection with others and connect all of us together. You always want the energy of the character, the spirit of the person, to enter you. I have been doing this for 26 years and some of the things I have done are always with me. Maybe it’s a word; maybe it’s a gesture; maybe the sound; maybe it’s a new understanding about something. I look at it like a past life because I keep going over and over what I have done.” (On his career).

• “He did things like other big men who did things that helped their countries.”

• “Hopefully this film is going to open the doors for a lot more films like it to be made.”

• “I can play a man who’s despicable. But I will still look inside him to find a point of connection. If I can find that kernel, audiences will relate to me.”

• “I did a massive amount to prepare for this. First of all I started learning Swahili, learning the accent, then I had to do study all the recording as well as all the books, tapes, documentaries. When I went to Uganda I met with his brother, sister, his ministers, his generals and even to the Ugandan king. I did more research for this role than any other character I have probably ever played.” (On his role in The Last King of Scotland (2006).

• “I go back and forth between indie and studio because I feel like it, not because I feel obligated to do one or the other. The only reason to make a decision like that is financial, you know, you can’t live. That does’t make my decision for me; I do what feels right for me. I will not going to do a bad movie just because it’s a studio movie or an indie film, and there are hordes of bad independent movies. People tend to think that indie movies are always good, but I have seen horrific ones, just as well as I have seen horrific studio films. So I just go by how I feel, it’s the only way you can figure it out. Otherwise you get lost in the maze of trying to second guess the people, the studio, how you can make your career long or short. It’s easy to get lost in this maze, called life, really, you know what I mean?” (On choosing studio or independent films).

• “I have friends, African American actors, who have had more of a struggle; hopefully they’re starting to see some air and light now. But in my directing career, in my acting career, in my producing career, I haven’t been bound by a lot of limitations. When I first started doing these kinds of unique characters, these diverse characters, there was hardly anybody doing them. So I had this open road.” (On being a black actor).

• “I started reading the Hagekure and other books, including one called The Code of the Samurai, and I watched a lot of films. I tried to find his mindset more than anything. It’s more like a trance-like state for this character than it is anything else, based in the ancient book that he follows. But I did a lot of different types of research.” (On his role in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) and how he prepared).

• “I think that there’s an awakening inside of me really honestly, and I honestly believe that the best work of my life is about to happen. I’m finding a balance in myself as an artist from the external and the internal, and so as a result the characters I play are going to be quite different. So what’s going to happen is that it’s going to lift up the characters I play, we’re going to start to see it and I think it’s going to change the face of my career.” – 2006 quote.

• “I used to take showers, just trying to get the guy to leave me. I needed to wash those darker passions away.” (On how powerful he thought his method acting was in The Last King of Scotland).

• “I want those names to be their destiny, for my daughter to be honest and my son to be expansive. I try to be like a forest, revitalizing and constantly growing.” (On his children’s names – True and Ocean – & his name).

• “I’m always blown away by people’s negative reactions to Cavanaugh. He’s a highly moral man who’s brought to the breaking point. To me, he’s like an angel. Yes, he’s obsessive. Anal Intense. But his goal is to get Vic MacKey off the street. This is somebody who beats people up on a weekly basis, steals money and blackmails people. But I’m the bad guy?” (On his character in “The Shield” (2002).

• “I’m an actor and I guess I have done so many movies I have achieved some high visibility. But a star? I guess I still think of myself as kind of a worker ant”.

• “I’m not trying to defend him; the Amin I found was not a good man”.

• “If I were to mark three, I’d mark Bird, because I grew immensely as an artist–I learned a lot–and also, I think, it was when people started to take me more seriously. I’d also mark Ghost Dog, because I started to understand something about myself in silence, how I’m capable of communicating certain things without doing much. And then I’d probably mark The Last King of Scotland, which marries the internal and the external in a strong way and brings together all of the things I have learned about my work into one character.” (On his best work).

• “In high school I did some musicals, but I never took acting until college. I was studying opera, classical voice, and a speech teacher asked me to audition for this play and I got the lead. And she helped me to get into a conservatory, with a scholarship as a singer, and then I was accepted into the acting conservatory. This agent saw me, the summer before I went to conservatory, and while I was in school, I started working right away. And it worked out. – On getting into acting”.

• “It is possible for a kid from east Texas, raised in south central LA and Carson, who believes in his dreams, commits himself to them with his heart, to touch them and to have them happen”.

• “It was an experience that changed my life and my thoughts. I went there with the purpose of understanding what it was like to be Ugandan, and I wanted to understand the food, the life, the way they deal with children and wives and with authority figures. I sat with Idi Amin`s brother underneath a big mango tree and he told me stories about what Idi was like and how he used to come to town and pull together soccer or rugby games. It all helped me with figuring out the way he behaved and the way he thought, so that 24 hours a day, even in my dreams, I was totally consumed by the character of Idi Amin. It was’t until the movie was over that I decided I could let go of the character, so the first thing I did was take a shower because I figured I could wash him off by scrubbing myself. I was in a room by myself, so I started yelling to get his voice out of me and get my own voice back.” (On his role in The Last King of Scotland (2006).

• “Kids would tease me, calling me `Little Bush. ` But…I thought being called Forest helped me find my identity”.

• “Mickey Rourke, I thought, was really interesting. I did a movie called Johnny Handsome that Walter Hill directed. I had a scene with Mickey in which he says goodbye to me, and I learned something very powerful. He did`t say anything. I don`t know if his thoughts were so powerful or my imagination was so large, but I could swear I could hear him speaking to me. It was like he was saying, `I want to tell you thanks–you know, I`m about to disappoint you, but you did a good job.` And then, finally, he says, `Thank you.` I was just like, `Whoa!` He`s an amazing actor.” (On the most interesting actor he has worked with)

• “My eye? It’s a genetic thing. My dad had it and now I have it. You know, I just found out that it may be correctable a little bit, because it does impair my vision. When I look up, I lose sight in this eye. I think maybe for other people, it informs the way they see me. But I don’t really think about this eye, other than the times people talk about it, or when people take photographs of me sometimes they might say stuff about it. I don’t think it makes me look bad or anything. It just is”.

• “My parents moved to Los Angeles when I was really young, but I spent every summer with my grandparents, and I’d stay with my grandfather on the farm in Longview. He was retired from the railroad, and he had a small farm with some cows and some pigs. I remember part of my youth was feeding hogs and ploughing fields and stuff, so that’s apart of me. And my parents raised me to say `sir` and `ma,` to open doors, things like that. That’s the way I was brought up. Also, unfortunately, I was taught not to question too much. I did’t really question my mom and dad. That’s usually what they told me to do”.

• “The guys on the set, Dwight, Jared, and me, would work for a day, and then the next day Jodie would work. We rarely worked together, so it was all about getting to know some of the guys. With the way scheduling was, she’s not in the small frame as all of us. They never did it that way. The thing about the film was you did become closer with some people in ways because it took so long. This is the longest shoot I have ever had. It was about 145 shooting days. We also had rehearsals before that. I think it so long because of the shots taken. It was the most planned movie I have been involved with.” (On filming the Panic Room (2002)).

• “They’re growing up in an environment so different than what I grew up in. I think they’re beginning to see how blessed they are. They’ll be coming back from now on, I think”.

• “Until film is just as easily accessible as a pen or pencil, then it’s not completely an art form. In painting you can just pick up a piece of chalk, a stick or whatever. In sculpture you can get a rock. Writing you just need a pencil and paper. Film has been a very elitist medium. It costs so much money. It doesn’t allow everyone who wants to tell stories to tell stories. The great storytellers however are going to rise to the top, no matter what. That’s why independent film is very important to me”.

• “Was a chance to expand myself and deepen my connection with the universe and with God”.

• “When I first decided to act Amin, I had that perception of Amin as presented by the west”.

• “When I was a kid, the only way I saw movies was from the back seat of my family’s car at the drive-in. It wasn’t my reality to think I would be acting in movies, so receiving this honor tonight tells me that it’s possible.” (On accepting his 2007 Best Actor Oscar).