Hollywood actress Cicely Tyson,45-years into acting has revealed why she has no plans of retiring anytime soon.
Covering the latest edition of Time Magazine, Miss Tyson shared dome insight into her journey.
Read excerpts below;
TIME: When did you know you were an artist?
Tyson: I never knew I was an artist. As a child growing up in the church, I was always performing. My mother, my father in particular was always grooming us for some recital in the church, so we always sang or recited or I played the piano. We never thought of it as being artistry.
How did you find your way into acting?
My first real conscious awareness of what acting was was as a grown woman working after school for the American Red Cross. They were having a fundraiser, and I was asked to participate by going into a theater and taking the can to raise funds. The theater was playing at the time Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. And my God, I never saw anything like it. I get goose-pimples now when I think about it. It was the most moving thing that I had ever experienced, and I was absolutely breathless when I left the theater. However, I never thought for one moment that it was something that I would be involved in.
Why not?
First of all, my mother wouldn’t hear of it. When I told her I had met someone who wanted me to be in a movie he was doing, she said, “You can’t do that.” However, he was persistent, and I was curious. This was a gentleman who was an actor turned producer, and was about to produce his first movie. I went for an interview and he gave me this book, which I now know was a script, and he suggested that we do a reading. So I sat there reading it. And he said, “No, I’m going to read this character and you read this character.” I said, “Oh,” and I guess that instinctively I did the right thing. We became the lead actors in this movie. It was independent — they did not have enough money — so they were never able to finish that film. A year or so later I got a call from the same gentleman and he said, “Well, unfortunately we were unable to finish that film, but we were able to raise money for a new one, and we still would like to have you in the lead.” The name of that one was Carib Gold.
