Ato Essandoh Quotes

Author Image

Ato Essandoh

Profession : Actor

Birth : July 29, 1972

I grew up listening to blues and rock n' roll and other music, but, legitimately, the Stones is one of my favorite bands in the world.

Ato Essandoh

Our next black president, I think, can be more like Muhammad Ali.

Ato Essandoh

Another benefit of going to Cornell is that 90 percent of your friends are doctors.

Ato Essandoh

I think I'm a good actor, but to replicate tens of thousands of man hours in surgery is really hard.

Ato Essandoh

If you're going to sign a contract, there are things you have to understand you might have to do. If you don't, then you walk away.

Ato Essandoh

White artists have made millions of dollars off music they stole from black artists. I don't blame all the white artists. I'm a huge Stevie Ray Vaughn fan, and he was always very gracious about where he learned his music. But a lot of the time, you'd think the white guys thought it up. Hey, hasn't anyone heard of Muddy Waters?

Ato Essandoh

I've never dated a Jewish woman.

Ato Essandoh

Once you get my snark going, I'll just start snarking it up all over Twitter.

Ato Essandoh

I see it in a lot of period pieces where everybody is standing and talking, in a stilted, archaic way, instead of being loose in the world. So, I try to do a little bit of research, just so that I can feel like I'm grounded, but then I try to bring as much of my human understanding that I can, under the filter of it being 1865.

Ato Essandoh

When I tell my friends, 'I'm in the 'Bourne' movie,' they're like, 'Congratulations! Wait... is Matt Damon coming back?' I go, 'Yeah.' And they're like, 'Yo! Matt Damon! Matty D!' Everyone pretends they know Matt Damon. It's exciting.

Ato Essandoh

Jason Bourne is supposed to be really sneaky and spry, but as soon as he walks by, everybody pulls out their cell phones and starts recording. That level of fame is wild to see.

Ato Essandoh

I never heard about tefillin. I was unfamiliar with the deep history and ritual of being an Orthodox Jew. Before you get out of bed, you say a prayer, and then you get out of bed, say another one.

Ato Essandoh

Growing up near Scarsdale, I should have had at least one Jewish girlfriend. Maybe at some point it'll happen.

Ato Essandoh

All of my friends on the street we're Jewish. I went to a lot of bar and bat mitzvahs. I even learned a little Hebrew.

Ato Essandoh

I was a chemical engineer in school. And, randomly, an ex-girlfriend dared me to do a play.

Ato Essandoh

You don't want to be a gimmick. You don't want to be a set piece, where people go, 'Hey, that's weird.'

Ato Essandoh

I was in chemical engineering at Cornell University. My girlfriend at the time dared me to do a play. I knew there was something I wanted, not necessarily engineering.

Ato Essandoh

Everything musically, for me, there's two kinds of music. There's Prince and Jimi Hendrix and then Miles Davis and everything filters through that.

Ato Essandoh

You look at how Barack Obama has had to conduct himself as president. It reminds me of Jackie Robinson, how he had to be very careful to reassure people that this was all right.

Ato Essandoh

The first time I ever heard the blues, my parents had a stack of records that they weren't using anymore. I found them when I was ten; I didn't know what it was. But I found Lightnin' Hopkins.

Ato Essandoh