Ato Essandoh Quotes

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Ato Essandoh

Profession : Actor

Birth : July 29, 1972

There's some dues that you just have to pay in life.

Ato Essandoh

Traveling, I've met Ghanaian people who have seen me in minor stuff, but they see the name Ato Essandoh, and they recognize it as a Ghanaian name. They come up to me and are always so excited. You don't think about it, but they really absorb American culture.

Ato Essandoh

I know I'm supposed to say this, but I really, genuinely think Matt Damon is a great dude.

Ato Essandoh

My parents are from Ghana. Until I was 17, I thought you had to go to college. I had no idea. I didn't know it was not an option.

Ato Essandoh

I'd never thought about acting as a job. I was an engineer; I was in science and technology. I loved movies and television growing up, but I'd never thought about it as, 'Oh, that guy Denzel Washington is employed as an actor.'

Ato Essandoh

Macklemore gets a Grammy over Kendrick Lamar. I still can't get over that. But again, it's not Macklemore's fault. It's the way of the country.

Ato Essandoh

I love the notion of a dude sitting there with an untuned guitar tapping his foot and just singing his passion out; that's what got me into music in the first place.

Ato Essandoh

The Chinese Student Association at Cornell put together their own play. It was all Asian people in the cast except for me, because they wanted to do a couple of scenes about an interracial relationship. I was the only non-Asian person on stage; the entire audience was Asian apart from my 10 friends that showed up.

Ato Essandoh

When you're a guest star on a movie or a TV show, I always say it's like being invited to a family reunion, but it's not your family. So you don't belong - they're being nice to you, but you don't fit in completely; you don't know everybody's story. You don't have a history.

Ato Essandoh

If you get too deep into the history, what often happens to a lot of us actors is that we become stilted. We forget that we're reading about something that happened a hundred years ago. If we don't put the human emotion that would naturally be in there, we end up being stilted instead of being human beings.

Ato Essandoh

I have the softest beard in the world. As far as growing it, it doesn't itch, and it's so non-intrusive. But, I am so sick of hair on my face and on my head. Because I'm not a really hairy guy, I'm not really used to it.

Ato Essandoh

I have a theater company that I'm a part of, Colt Coeur, and they do some really rad projects.

Ato Essandoh

There is more equity now in movies and TV, although I think its mostly because of changing demographics. It's not a moral proposition. It's good business. Shows about people of all colors are making money.

Ato Essandoh

'Copper' is my first period piece. It's funny because I've been doing a lot of episodes of 'Elementary' with Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu; they keep bringing me back on the show, and so I go from being an outstanding black doctor to being a kind of hood, ex-car thief who went through rehab in 'Elementary.'

Ato Essandoh

When people say Jerry Lee Lewis invented rock n' roll, they forget Little Richard. People talk about Elvis Presley and forget he was singing black music. I don't blame Elvis. It was the music business figuring it could make more money from this music if it weren't presented from the original source.

Ato Essandoh

I never thought I'd play an orthodox Jewish man.

Ato Essandoh

Just the little bit that I've learned about Judaism, I didn't realize how, dare I say, intense that religion is as far as all of the things that you have to know and remember and the ritualism of it.

Ato Essandoh

I have the softest beard in the world. As far as growing it, it doesn't itch, and it's so non-intrusive. But I am so sick of hair on my face and on my head.

Ato Essandoh

It's funny because as much as I've done Dr. Freeman, I guess because I shave right afterwards, people don't recognize me necessarily as Dr. Freeman, whereas a small role like 'Garden State' or 'Get Him to the Greek', which is the funniest one to me, they're like, 'Hey, you're that dude!' and you're like, 'Oh my God!' Which is awesome.

Ato Essandoh

The first time I was onstage, I felt like the audience was breathing with me. I don't know if I was good or not; I just knew I was having a ball, and for the first time, I felt I belonged somewhere.

Ato Essandoh