Uzo Aduba quit acting just 45 minutes before being cast in ‘Orange is the New Black.
The 35-year-old actress – who has played Suzanne ‘Crazy Eyes’ Warren in the prison comedy drama since it began in 2013 – admitted her "heart give out" and she decided to turn her back on acting, but then had to have second thoughts when she got the life-changing call.
She recalled: "There have been times in my life where I have doubted, questioned, felt tired, but I had never quit before in my core. My heart never quit.
"And that was the first time I felt my heart give out on me."
But then less than an hour after deciding to quit, Uzo was cast in ‘OITNB’ and "lost [her] mind".
She told the new issue of Essence magazine: "I lost my mind. I’m running around my apartment crying.
"I was like, ‘You don’t understand. I just quit.’ And my agent quoted ‘The Godfather’ line, ‘Just when you thought you were out, they pull you back in.’"
When she was trying to launch her career, Uzo was constantly told to change in order to meet certain expectations, but she ignored the advice she was given.
She said: "This business will try to convince you that you’re not enough. That you’re not pretty enough, thin enough, talented enough, interesting enough, experienced enough, and I say, ‘Enough. Enough with that!’ Who are you to tell me that I am not enough when I know that I am more than enough?
"I cannot subscribe to anyone else’s idea of how I am meant to look, what size I am meant to be, whether I have a gap in my teeth, how I’m supposed to behave, what your idea of what my black womanhood is supposed to look like.
"No. This is me. I am just Uzo. I can’t be anything other than that, and I don’t want to be."