Quotes from Zawe Ashton

One of the first plays I ever did was at the Royal Court Theatre in London; it was the first play I got after drama school.

My real life memory of leaving Uni is an overwhelming excitement to be going home but also a weird numbness.

No-one tells you about being in episodic television and it ending. No-one tells you how painful it is. How bizarre it is when you've dedicated your life to one character for five years.

I just always play these really extreme characters - they've all come with parental guidance stickers on them.

I love the visual medium of film and TV. I love the science of it, working with the sound and the lighting and every aspect.

Honestly, the life of a serial character on television, I'd love to write an essay about it.

I love writing with pen and paper; I hate technology.

I prefer to avoid the phrase 'strong women' when talking about female characters and the lack thereof or the need therefore, because it's not about being strong, it's also about being vulnerable, funny etc.

If you cut me open I bleed East London.

I don't want to be 'de-ethnicised.' I hate it when people say, 'Oh I don't even think of you as a woman,' or, 'I don't even think of you as a black woman.' Well what do you think of me as then? A loaf of bread?

I plan on having a long career. I don't want to burn out.

My dad constantly tells me I should calm down, but I feel so sad when I see places I've known since I was a child closing. I burst out crying when a local pharmacy closed the other day; it's just going to become a shop that nobody has much of a need for. But I am trying to move with the times.

I like clothes that feel fresh and surprising.

Todd Solondz is a film maker I've always loved because of how he balances darkness, humour and surrealism in his films.

For me, the banner that I want to wave in terms of giving a jump start to writers of any gender is just to make female protagonists as complex as their male counterparts.

Mum got me involved in every activity under the sun - singing, dancing and drama classes at the Anna Scher theatre school.

Dreams of a Life' and 'Fresh Meat' have left me on such a high. I'm not complaining but I'm not complacent either.

How long have we got to talk about women of colour and imposter syndrome. It's a real thing, and many people have it. It's, I think, a particular characteristic of the overachiever. Because you're bottomless, you never think what you've achieved is enough.

What a character wears and how it affects their mood and their movements has always been very important to me. A character's clothes, if they're truthful, can make audiences feel something.

I think anyone who has been bullied finds it life-affirming if you live to tell the tale. I just wish someone told me at school that there's this weird average whereby if you're not popular at school you will become popular later.

If I'm wearing the wrong clothes I can't think. It sounds so weird but it just has to be the right fabrics and like the right feeling on my body.

When you work in film sets, when you're working on projects that are male dominated, you are always treated as the last priority.

I'm just coming to terms with the fact that I will always do lots of different things and I can't really stay in one place too long.

It's such a difficult thing for women, especially, to admit when we're not coping, because we're supposed to be all right with all the different roles we're born with and are piled on us later on.