ABSTRACT
I set up a theatre company called Wild Iris with my friend Polly Irvine three years ago. There can be a romantic myth about being an actor and what a wonderful life it is. I think it’s a terrible profession. I think it’s full of neurotic, paranoid, unemployed people; yet frequently very gifted and frequently very frustrated, and I don’t think anybody who’s involved with the profession takes that lightly because we sort of know that that is what is going to happen to a lot of us a lot of the time. If you’re a black actor you can multiply those difficulties by ten. Our position in the world, in this country, for all of us black people, has still not reached its full potential, and that is reflected in the acting profession.
