Best 56 quotes of Tracee Ellis Ross on MyQuotes

Tracee Ellis Ross

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    After college, I shot a pilot for a show on Lifetime, which was basically House of Style for a TV lover. I think I got paid $1,500, and I was like, "Mom, I'm moving out! I made it!" I did two seasons of that, but I felt like a talking head and wanted to do more.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    And it [acting] was exciting to me. And scary.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    As a younger person, my philosophy was jump off a cliff. I realize now that there are stairs and elevators. I am learning every day to allow the space between where I am and where I want to be to inspire me and not terrify me. I can even ask for help! Not feeling that I have to know everything, and that’s where the growth comes in, in the not knowing.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    Because of my unique experience as my mom's child, the beginning of my journey was more about me trying to figure out who I was on my own. My mom is one of the greatest moms and so supportive of all my siblings and of all of us being who we are, and not who she wanted us to be.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    [Black-ish creator] Kenya Bariss wrote on Girlfriends. We've been friendly since then. He sent me [the pilot] and said, "I wrote it for you." But I know what that means in this industry.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    Black-ish is really a show about an American family and these are some of the topics that come up - for all of us, in different ways - and we get to see how this family is walking through it.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    Differences in experience, points of view and opinions aren't what pulls us apart. It's what pulls us together.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    Getting to a place where I am comfortable saying things was hard-earned for me. I've chewed on the ground glass of my own experience. I saw Gloria Steinem speak, and I was just like, Shut the front door. She was saying that she didn't come into her own until her 40s, and she was asking herself the question, Why should she have to get married? And I just thank God someone asked that question, right? I think we're the first generation of women asking ourselves certain questions and deciding for ourselves.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    Here is my wish and my desire and my pledge as well: that we remember our true nature and our womanhood. That we own and know that we are more than our bodies and yet our bodies are these sacred, beautiful, rhythmic houses for us.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I am learning every day to allow the space between where I am and where I want to be to inspire me and not terrify me.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I buy what makes my heart sing. So, it's not that I follow one specific track. It's sort of what I like. I love colors. I love unique pieces. I love vintage clothing.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I don't have the luxury of not going to work when I don't feel up to it. Most people don't. On those days, I acknowledge I am feeling f-cking crappy, and I'm not at my best, and I still want to or need to keep walking forward. I have to do some of my best work on my worst days. I have to look pretty even when I don't feel pretty. There's a way to hold both things.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I don't really talk about my personal life. It's a strange and funny and weird thing. Sometimes you have a conversation with someone and the paparazzi snaps a picture of you and people decide you're dating. If I try to answer everything people say, I would be up all night.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I doubted Black-ish , and I'll tell you why. Because it doesn't matter if a writer wrote it for you. He could've written it with you in mind. But TV is a collaborative art. It involves producers, networks, studios, and many people signing off on you. And a lot of times there are deals in place - actors with studios that they're looking for shows for.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I felt like it was a courageous show [Black-ish] from the beginning. We are a black family - we're not a family that happens to be black. But the show is not even about us being black. The show is about us being a family. That is groundbreaking - on TV, the black characters either happen to be black or they're the "black character," where everything they say is about being black. I think that's the genius.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    If I'm going to show cleavage or chest then I don't show leg. I show one thing. If I show leg then everything else is covered up.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I hope they look at me and think, 'That lady looks like she accepts herself'.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I just want to say this. I love being a woman. I love playing a woman. I love being a whole and full woman. I am more than my parts, and we all are. And we all, as women, need to continue to change our gaze from how we are seen to how we are seeing. We are full and beautiful women, and let us live in that.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I'm a farmer's market girl, so if you go and get beautiful, fresh fruit, that's local, and it hasn't been frozen yet, it's pretty fantastic.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I'm a really big believer in self care. One of the ways I nourish my soul is I eat the way I live my life - joyfully.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I'm extremely blessed to have the extraordinary mother that I have, and I don't mean Diana Ross, I mean the mother. My mom paved a road that didn't exist, as did Oprah.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I'm trying to find my own version of what makes me feel beautiful.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I never heard my mom say, "Not now, I'm busy." But I did have extraordinary experiences that I'm very aware were extraordinary. I mean, I traveled Europe before I was 12 years old, had been to the White House numerous times. Andy Warhol photographed me; Michael Jackson called our house.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I sometimes think to myself, you're not going to meet a new friend of any kind at home in front of the TV with your DVR. As much as it's great, and there are so many good shows on TV, and I have great books that I'm reading, get out and interact with people.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I think our culture promotes fear and shame.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    It was when I realized I needed to stop trying to be somebody else and be myself, that I actually started to own, accept and love what I had.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    It would drive the photographers crazy because I would giggle and tell jokes. I was gregarious, and looking back, I realize I had a captive audience.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I've always been a curious thinker. And now, as an adult, I can articulate it.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I wanted Bow's hair and makeup and clothing to look like a woman who has four children, a career, and a full life. For example, she won't wear eyeshadow unless she's going out. Because it takes a lot of time to put eyeshadow on. She's a woman who has style, but it's all about functionality - she grabs stuff from her closet.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I was cast in a movie [originally] called Mr. Spreckman's Boat, starring Marcia Gay Harden and Jennifer Connelly. I felt like an "actress." Both of them have won Oscars - maybe that means I might one day.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I was recently watching Rihanna on the Billboard awards, and I was like, My God, she's incredible! And then I looked up her age [28]. She's always been talented. She's always been a star. But when you see her, she's becoming herself. It's age that happens. That's what I respond to.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I was shy, but it came out in a big personality. My turning point was when I let my hair go naturally and I got contact lenses. I am really blind, by the way. I have these big eyes that don’t work!

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I was spoiled when I worked in the magazine world. Fashion closets are heaven and I seem to model my organization after a fashion closet.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    I was very shy growing up. My shyness manifested as a big personality, as opposed to the wallflower personality. It's been a journey getting comfortable in my skin. I've worked on trying to find the authentic balance between the bravado of my personality that was sort of a defense and the truth within my bigness.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    Just embrace your hair! I really feel like I am not an advocate for people doing what I do. I'm an advocate for people discovering and finding what works for them.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    My bathroom is filled with hair and makeup stuff and I play with it all the time. What the real lesson is, is that you can own your own sense of beauty. It doesn't have to be something you get from somewhere else.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    My generation is one of the first generations of "choiceful" women - women who have actually had the choice of how they architect their lives - and I don't think shame should have any place in that. But as that generation, you get cuts and bruises.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    My mom didn't adhere to any of those typical rules. She woke us up for school every morning, and was there at dinner or would call at bedtime. She never left for longer than a week. She recorded while we were sleeping.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    My mom helped me. I was very shy growing up, but my shyness sort of manifested in a big personality.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    My mom would leave her job, and there would be throngs of people screaming and banging on our car. I come from a very private family, but I was born into a public family.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    One of the photographers was like, "Can you stop talking and try to look sexy for a minute?

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    Self-care of all kinds is a huge part of my life. I really encourage other women and other people to really put self-care - and that includes the beauty regime, how you eat, all of that - into your body.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    Somehow [Kenya Bariss] has figured out how to explore these very weighty, sticky, sharp topics, and still be funny and not make fun of the topic.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    Someone asked me recently, "Do you get sick of people asking you about your hair?" And the reason I don't is because I actually feel like you could chronicle my journey of self-acceptance through my journey with my hair. It's a badge of something bigger.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    Sometime in my second year at Brown [University], I took an acting class. And the lightbulb went off for me. I fell in love with it. I realized that everything I was afraid of about myself, all my fears, could be used in that world.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    The clothing, the makeup, the freedom of expression in [the models'] bodies. It was Linda and Christy and Naomi at the time. So I modeled before college.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    There is a way to be a woman, ask for what we deserve and be able to negotiate.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    The two things that I thought were really interesting about this character [Bow] for me were that she actually loved her husband, and he loved her. The comedy was not coming from the fact that they hated each other. Which is what television couples are usually based on.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    This is a couple that actually loves, respects & appreciates each other.

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    Tracee Ellis Ross

    This woman [Bow] was not simply a reflection of who her husband was. She was her own whole self. And even if we weren't exploring life through her eyes, when we did see her it was clear that she had a full life.