Grace Gealey
Grace Gealey
Grace Byers is an American actress, known for her role as Anika Calhoun in the Fox music-industry primetime soap opera, Empire...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actress
Date of Birth26 July 1984
CityButler, PA
CountryUnited States of America
creates depp fan huge johnny love meryl screen share spielberg work
I would love to share the screen with Meryl Streep, wouldn't we all? I would love to work with Spielberg and Scorsese; that would be lovely. I'm also a huge fan of Johnny Depp and the way he creates his characters, so that would be fun. I mean, any of the greats, really.
among black competition everywhere felt home saying shared understand variety women
There's competition among women everywhere you go. But back home, we understand that you can look like a variety of things and still be from the same culture. What I'm saying is that I've never felt like I was a light-skinned black woman. Never felt that way because we shared the same culture back home.
born grew islands moved time until
My mother is Afro-Caribbean and my father is Caucasian-American, and I was born in Pennsylvania and moved to the Cayman Islands when I was about 2. So I grew up there with my mother, and it's really all I know. I grew up there until it was time to go to college, and that's when I moved back to America.
challenges compassion deaf faced fact given grace insight intricate life lived living raised rarely suspect time
Living the life I have lived - being raised by deaf parents, assimilating to a different culture, and the challenges I have faced over time - has given me insight to the fact that each person has their own complex, intricate story, and it's rarely what I suspect it is. We must have compassion and grace for each other. We must.
audience deals death experience feels human identify ignored sibling
'Empire' deals with the black experience, the human experience, sibling rivalry, what it feels like to be ignored or doted upon by a parent, illness, death. There are so many things that I think the audience can identify with.
cross fact home knew pursued though viable widely
Because of the fact that being a professional actor is not a career that is widely pursued back home in the Cayman Islands, I never thought it was a viable profession. It didn't even cross my mind. So when I knew I wanted to do theater, I didn't think 'actress,' even though I loved to perform.
available came coming home months movies three watch
Back home, we watch a lot of movies, and that was never available to us. When I came to America, I was like, 'No, it's really coming out this Friday? Not three months from now?'
bark offer truly
Are we truly being our sisters' keepers? Initially, that dog-eat-dog mentality within us may bark and say that we aren't responsible for other people, but if that was truly the case, then why are we even here? We have so much to offer and give to this world.
art continue hope love offer people
There's a love that I want to continue to offer people. And, I hope I can offer people that love through the art.
consider love
There a lot of other things I love to do. I consider myself as an artist, so I dance, I paint, I sing, so as long as I'm creating, I'm happy.
please
I'm really easy to please and not high-maintenance at all. I like that chill, not stressed-out kind of lifestyle.
barefoot climb fruit island pick run sell side
I used to run around barefoot and climb trees and pick fruit and sell it on the side of the road like a real island girl.
accurate depiction
Having racially diverse casts on television is a more accurate depiction of the demographic of the world we live in.
Do you, and the rest is background noise.