Zendaya

If you pretend to be a role, one day that role is going to break. You’re going to want to be yourself, and people are going to be really disappointed finding out you’re not who you’ve been living your life to be. Just keep it real and be yourself – that’s what people gravitate toward.

I’m very proud of my skin and my face, and I have no problem not wearing makeup. I don’t wear makeup because I feel like I need to cover myself up or because I don’t feel confident. I wear makeup because it’s fun; it’s like painting on my face.

I think it’s a responsibility, but like Tupac Shakur, I’m a real model. Which means: I’m not pretending to be something that I’m not, because like he said, people are going to be disappointed when they find out who you are, because it’s not going to be what you presented to the world. So just keep it real. I’m a good kid and that’s all.

You get the best and the worst of both worlds. I know there were a lot of times when you try to figure out where you fit in. I just realized that it worked to my advantage because I just got along with a lot of people. But to literally be two races, it’s really hard to see color because I’m the gray area. I had to learn about both sides of myself and be really proud of and educated in both.

I love hearing educated people talk and just shut everyone up. Knowledge is always the loudest voice.

There are so many different definitions of ‘pretty.’ it’s so much broader than before. The old pretty is boring- nobody cares anymore.

I’m probably in that next group of actors they call if Scarlett (Johansson) or Keira (Knightley) turns down a part. But I feel really lucky. To be a working actor is pretty incredible, because 99 per cent of actors are out of work. I know a lot of talented people who are better actors than me but haven’t had a break. It’s all down to timing and luck.

As a 29-year-old, the only thing that I can possibly think is that if I’m still performing at 50, it’s because I’ll have had disastrous marriages and I have to pay for them.

[on Trump lying] They are self-serving half-truths from a self-serving half-man who has somehow convinced half the country that sacrifice is the same thing as success.

Thank you to Kanye West and the fact that he is willing to tell the TRUTH. One new and great FACT – African American unemployment is the lowest ever recorded in the history of our Country. So honored by this. Thank you Kanye for your support. It is making a big difference!

You’d be surprised how much fun you start to have once ya stop giving A f**k.

Never have doubted it, even when the plane crash happened. I wasn’t mad at God. I just knew that there was a reason that I didn’t know about why it happened.

[on her parents] They’re very harsh critics and they’ve often said to me: “That was shit, you were crap’, but this is the first time (after he saw her as “Amy Foster” on Swept from the Sea) my father said to me: ‘I think one day you’ll be a good actress”!

You can sometimes get your own feelings across more strongly if you pretend that you’re singing it from someone else’s angle. But it’s always from me. It’s just a new way of framing it.

I’m not a mean person, but I have a capacity for it. I have the biting comment formed somewhere in the back of my head – like it’s in captivity. Sometimes people expect that I’m going to be tough. It’s not a bad situation. People treat you better. People are on time.

If there’s anything that I can do with my time and my day to somehow make a difference, while I’m alive, imma try to do it. Period.

I have talked to Debbie Hammond quite a bit, Jim Hammond’s wife, his widow. I’ve seen their kids. And last time we played Dallas, a lot of them came over. It’s hard for them to come see the show. It’s still hard.

My little cousin tells me I look like Magneto so I guess that’s who I should probably play.

I’d say I’m a bit of a fatalist but not as much as I was. I used to be like “whatever happens happens” and have that innate fatalistic outlook. But I think it’s more about what you are thinking in your own mind that is the most powerful aspect of controlling your own life.

When I started, I never gave any thought whatsoever to what I would be doing when I was 70.

I have learned a lot about myself and come to deal with a lot of things that, at first, bothered me.