Ariana DeBose has urged others to “never stop believing” in their dreams.
The 32-year-old actress started out as a contestant on “So You Think You Can Dance?” in 2009 before taking on small Broadway roles, but she now has an Academy Award and is encouraging others to work hard for their dreams to come true.
“Never stop believing. You know, your dreams don’t work unless you do. It’s hard in the world that we live in, but your dreams have possibility, they always do, never give up on them. Sometimes in order to be re-inspired, you have to choose a different path and you never know where it’s going to take you. But it’s always led me to really interesting places,” she told People magazine.
The “West Side Story” actress voices the leading role of Asha in the new Disney musical animation “Wish” and recently revealed why she “cried like a baby” when she landed the part.
“They came to me shortly after ‘West Side Story’ had premiered, and I hadn’t really won anything,”she explained to Movie Web: I was just excited that ”West Side Story’ had come out, and it looked like I was going to have the opportunity to make more work. Then they called, and Chris Buck [the director] was like, ‘We want to make this movie with you.’ I was like, amazing, what is it? Because they hadn’t really told me, but then they explained what the story was going to be, and I cried like a baby because I was a Disney kid growing up. I can tell you definitively that so many of our previous Disney princesses and heroines inspired me while in the booth. I could hear the echoes of ‘Mulan’ and ‘Cinderella’. I would go, ‘Alice would have said that’ or ‘Raya, there you at girl!'”
