Omar Epps's BIO His role as Lincoln Hayes in the big-screen version of The Mod Squad (1999)
July 23, 1973 (Brooklyn, New York, USA)
Omar Epps's quotes |
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I want to do good work, whether that's in the studio system or indie. Pretty soon people will be putting their own movies online. I just want to roll with the wave and do good work.
You've gotta stick to your guns. What works is knowing me and having a clear vision of who I believe myself to be-where I'm going and how am I going to get there.
It's almost like movies in theaters aren't meant to be intelligent. Major motion pictures are meant to entertain.
There was a film called The Boxer, with Daniel Day-Lewis. I liked that.
You go on the web and there's a myriad of websites with people buying and trading, and its a personal thing. You're your own commodity.
You give yourself to the moment and go with it.
On cable, you can take a little something and learn, there's a little more meat in it.
We were all Romans once, I guess.
I actually had my first record deal before I had my first movie. I've been doing music my whole life.
To capture boxing on film I think is the hardest thing. No helmets, you can't hide the guy. I took some shots and gave some shots out.
It's natural for any actor that segues into directing to be an actor's director. You know how to relate to the actors.
You attract certain things to you for a reason. For me, if it doesn't come to fruition then it wasn't meant to be.
Football and boxing are my two favorite sports.
Cable has the balls to do what they want to do, the balls to tell the stories that need to be told. They don't have to worry about audiences, because they already have their viewership.
You know how we all sing in the shower? That's how I box, in the shower.
You have to dedicate yourself to this. I love beinactg an actor.
I'm going to roll with the punches, but there are a lot of young actors, and we're breaking down walls.
You want to live your own life, but when you have fame, there are certain things you can't get away with.
I don't want to be typecast as an athlete.
Writing is the beast unto itself.
My first film, Juice, ended up being a classic urban film.
Most people, especially actors, when you start so young, you don't make it past 27. I don't know why that is.
I don't know if you saw the first Alfie, the Michael Caine film, but Jude's shagging everything in the city.
I've been in this business longer than most, while guys like Taye Diggs have only been doing this a few years.
I feel like whatever you do in life, if it's what you love to do, and you can get paid for it, then it's a blessing.
Whatever art form you're working in, it's crucial to see it clearly, to feel it clearly, and not to worry about the results, or how someone else will see it.
After my first film, I was like, damn, I'm not going to work probably for another five years, so that's been a blessing.
When they try to market what they call black films, they have this core audience, who has this interest or that expectation. Why not put the movie out in 5,000 theaters to begin with?
People will take what you give them. And we have to take responsibility.
The only way to ensure a film is going to sell is put Will Smith in it and you open it in 3,000 theaters and make sure we have all the top promotional spots in each venue.
We wanted the boxing to look authentic. To do that, we had to go in there and dish it, and give it.
I really don't know how this happened, I'm not the biggest dude. I'm 5'10", buck-seventy, maybe.
I had known about Jackie Kallen's boxers, but I had no idea they were managed by a woman.
I've never taken myself too seriously.
I definitely took bits and pieces of a lot of fighters that I liked, but I don't know if I have the ability to really do the Sugar Ray things.
I'm not saying that all gangsters should get organized, but in this modern day when all these kids are feeling displaced and joining gangs, it gives them a code to draw from.
The studios know what they know because they ask who they want and what they want.
I took some lumps and bruises, but that's what we were there to do. Charles S. Dutton is an avid boxing fan and we wanted to sort of set a new standard for boxing films.
New York has a specific cold. I've been all across the country, but there's something coarse.
I've been given certain opportunities, but as far as the consistency, who would have known? It's not something I came in expecting.
I've tried to choose projects that are good platforms not only for myself but the other actors in the film.
There's different styles of writing, and then there's rewriting. For me, it comes from the heart first, from what I feel needs to be said, and from there I can shape it based on the reality that I live in.
It was crazy... five hours a day, just constant boxing, like Boxing 101. I had never worked out that hard. It was crazy, staying overtime in the gym, just being as physically prepared as I could be.
We filmed one boxing scene for three days, and this guy has to hit you in the ribs for three days. I just wanted to be prepared and build my body up as much as I could.
I am an artist and I have an instrument that can be played beautifully.
That word, fan, has always kind of bothered me.
I want to do a romantic-comedy. That's what I'm really leaning towards doing in the next few years. I want to show people a whole different side of me.
I'm an avid boxing fan, so that was an attraction as well. And to work with Meg Ryan, Charles Dutton... and I just thought the story was great.
Kids in Houston don't want to see the same thing as kids in Wyoming.
People are realizing that color has no bearing on what's known as brotherhood.
You have to make your own rules, but you do have to realize the rules of the game are not going to change. They're not going to change a hundred years from now. It's a corporate world!
If you hear certain things about Allen Iverson or Sean Penn, people are like whatever wordup, because you know them like that.
I'm going to be at the helm of a big media conglomerate, and we'll have funding from all of the Brotherhood. And then I'll probably be president when I'm 65.
I like all sorts of foreign films. French filmmakers, Italians. You get what you can get.
The main thing is seeing your vision. I'm an aspiring writer and producer, and I'm sure that the first couple of things I write and co-produce, I will be acting in.
Boxing, for me, it's the beginning of all sports. I'm willing to bet that the first sport was a man against another man in a fight, so I think that's something innate in all of us.
If somebody told me when I was 12, You know, you can make a living doing this, I would have wrote for a living.
We did a remake of Alfie, with Jude Law, Susan Sarandon, Marisa Tomei, Nia Long, myself, a wonderful cast, and I had a hell of a time doing that film.
I never boxed before. When I was young, early teens, I took some martial arts and stuff, but the training on this was me learning from A to Z.
People know that I'm dramatic and that certain part of me, but they don't know the whimsical goofy part.
The language difference would cause some comedic moments naturally on screen.
In real life if you take away everything we've been taught, our clothing and everything, and we're all stripped butt-naked, standing in a room, the situation works itself out.
I got a couple of TV ideas I'm working on now. I'm taking my time with writing because it's something you never stop learning, it's something you can always get better at.
They say that 2 percent of the population of actors are working. That's phenomenal, but that's because that's how many people in the world are artists and are actors.
There's show and there's business. Business is a whole other beat.
I spend 90 percent of my time saying no, and my accountant yells at me for it, but when I started in this business, I wanted my career to have legs.
If someone saves your life, you develop a brotherhood, no matter what your race.
Every year they have a New Black Hollywood. Where's white Hollywood? Or Asian Hollywood? People want to talk about race.
There's some films I absolutely loved, like Breakfast of Champions - it's a film I was in that I thought was brilliant. People didn't seem to like it.
I want that to challenge the audience.
If I can see my vision as a writer, while I'm acting it out, I'll be going through a different part of the same picture. Same thing as a producer, which is partly hiring people to do your job for you.
Getting hit was funny. One of my most memorable experiences was the first time I got hit by a jab and how it shook from the top of my spine to my Achilles tendon.
I believe success is preparation, because opportunity is going to knock on your door sooner or later but are you prepared to answer that?
What was really really rich was shooting the boxing stuff. That's when some of the boxers got to say, Wow this stuff is pretty hard, because the repetition of it.
There's a cockiness about the performing arts. There's an eagerness to do the thing that you love doing.
A lot of directors are overbearing and tend to make you doubt your instincts.
The whole Black Hollywood thing doesn't exist for me anymore. Once someone says that to themselves, they subject themselves to those rules.
People really enjoy when they bump into me because I'm just a laid back, normal guy. The only time I get a little defensive is when I'm with my family, obviously trying to enjoy a family moment.
I like boxing movies. One of the hardest things for me to watch as far as boxing films, is the boxing. The actual boxing usually sucks.
Rocky is the quintessential boxing film, but guys in the boxing gyms completely think that's a misrepresentation of boxing.
I'm trying to make $300 billion and laugh at the end of the day.
Before ER a lot of people knew my name and some people knew my face. I saw big difference after ER, like, wow, I didn't know television was that powerful.
The world is as it should be.
There's so many components involved in film that you really never know what's going to be a hit.
I would love to have a multimedia company up and running where we're writing and producing films and stage plays, television, even music.
Meg Ryan is pretty laid back-almost like a country girl. It was fun to watch her put on the leather, the lace, and the hair, and strutting around. She had fun with it. She was great to work with.
You have to play the political game sometimes.
You say Alfie, people know it, but people don't know it. I think they'll like it.
I've tried to immerse myself into what I'm doing at that particular time
They say the most troubling time in your life is when you're becoming enlightened, because then you can't relate to the ignorant or the enlightened, because you're in between.
The only limitations that I can have are the ones that I set on myself.
I've been writing since I was a kid. Short stories, poetry, and all of that, and acting is just an extension of that. It just came naturally. So it's coming full circle.
When the old Italian mob was coming up, during the Kennedy years, they still had ethics, like, no women and children, which calls for less violence. That's what the word organized is, in front of crime.
People don't want to pay 8 or 9 dollars to go see a problem that they have in their life, on screen. They pay to get away from that. That's why they watch soap operas.
To be an artistic person in some people's eyes is to be aloof. But you have to not take yourself so seriously.
Each experience has offered something different in regards to story. I really didn't want to do any more sports films. And then, this comes along. How could I not take the opportunity?
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