There's the conventional wisdom, of which I have none, where you get a record deal, you get a publicist, you get a campaign, and you do the tour, but none of that adds up to things like nuance and subtlety and dynamic.

I get accused of having a haughty smugness. I have a lopsided mouth. I can't help it. I was born with it. It looks as if I am smirking. I have had my publicist tell me, 'Don't do that smile on the red carpet.' I'm, like, 'That's my smile.'

I will have my publicist pull pictures of the way I look at events so I can see, 'Oh, that cut is not as flattering as I thought,' or 'I should smile bigger,' or 'That positioning is odd.' I learn from it.

In many ways, it was much, much harder to get the first book contract. The hardest thing probably overall has been learning not to trust people, publicists and so forth, implicitly.

I am honored to be one of this year's Urbanworld ambassadors for the festival's 20th anniversary, joining my friend David Oyelowo. I have always had a special relationship with Urbanworld, back to my days as a festival publicist to previewing my earlier films and now as an ambassador.

There's the conventional wisdom of which I have none where you get a record deal you get a publicist you get a campaign and you do the tour but none of that adds up to things like nuance and subtlety and dynamic.

In many ways it was much much harder to get the first book contract. The hardest thing probably overall has been learning not to trust people publicists and so forth implicitly.

I'm a bad dater - I'm just not good at it. It's so weird dating in this town. It's like high school. I get a lot of people who have their publicist call my agent to ask 'Is she dating anyone?'

The camera fails to capture the 'business' in show business! We typically will give 10 percent of our salary to the agent 10 percent to the manager and 5 percent to the lawyer plus the publicist gets a flat fee which needs to be budgeted for.