Carmen Ejogo set her mind to becoming an actor, but then made her own rules about how she would make it happen.
"I was a jack of all trades," Ejogo said in a recent appearance on "Popcorn with Peter Travers." "But at some point I had to make that decision to take it really seriously. So I started writing letters to favorite agents. And got feedback and got lucky."
She added, "I got an agent without having gone to drama school, and was just out doing it. I'm one of those. I'm a hustler. I just get on with it.
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Now Ejogo may be poised to take home her first Emmy for her role opposite Mahershala Ali in HBO's "True Detective" crime drama. The role has proven to be one of her favorites.
"The fact that this is a character that is allowed to self-actualize over eight episodes and really flourish as a woman that has had a family, that has spent good years trying to be the crutch to a man that needed that sort of support, and has found her way to the other side of that and is still viable and is still going, all of those things are exciting to me to explore and to bring to the screen," Ejogo, 45, told Travers "Because that's so much the journey of so many women."
Watch the full interview with Peter Travers and Carmen Ejogo in the video above.