Of that she already had plenty. She showed it most memorably on the day in 1963 when she went into Shalimar’s barber shop in Harlem and asked to have her sleek bob cut away. For a while she had practised hairdressing herself, wielding her hot comb and pressing irons to straighten out those unkempt curls, as white people saw them.
关于这一点，她可以说是本色出演。1963年的一天，她将这点展现的淋漓尽致，让人印象深刻，当时她前往哈莱姆区的莎乐美理发店，要求剪掉她那时髦的波波头。有一段时间，她练习自己摆弄发型，想用电热梳和夹板把那些白人眼中的蓬乱卷发拉直。
Now she would wear her hair natural. It happened to suit the latest part she was playing; but more than that, it showed her real self, and she felt beautiful. She kept that half-inch Afro for her TV role in “East Side/West Side”, the first main role for a black actress in a series, astonishing Americans because her character had a serious career, as a secretary, and was comfortable in her skin.
现在她留着一头自然的卷发。这恰好贴合她最近扮演的角色；但更重要的是，这幅样貌展示出她真实的自我，她觉得自己很美。她在电视剧《东边、西边》中留着半英寸的非洲风格的发型，这是第一部由黑人女演员主演的电视剧，因为她的角色从事的是正经的职业——秘书，而且没有因为肤色有丝毫拘谨，这让美国观众很是吃惊。
She then retained that lean, proud look for years. many activists marched, but her civil-rights statement was her face on stage and screen. Each time she chalked up a first—the first black woman to win an Emmy as a lead actress, for “Jane Pittman”, and the first to receive an honorary Oscar, in 2018—she considered it not just a chance to be dazzling in ruffles, silk or lace, but a victory for humankind.
此后，她一直保持着那瘦削而傲人的容貌。许多活动人士参加游行活动，而她的民权宣言都是在舞台和银幕上展示的。每当她获得破纪录奖项时——因饰演简·皮特曼获得艾美奖的首位黑人女主演，以及2018年成为首位获得奥斯卡终身成就奖的黑人女性——她都认为，这不仅仅是一次身穿华贵服饰，成为焦点的机会，而是人类的一次胜利
Defiance came naturally, as a black woman in a world where black misery was largely ignored and black beauty dismissed. Consigned to a typing pool when she left school, she walked out, declaring that God did not intend her to bang on a typewriter for the rest of her life.
作为一名黑人女性，在那个黑人惨状无人过问、黑人美女被人嫌弃的世界里，她自然而然地开始反击了。离开学校后，她被安排在一个打字室打工，她很快就辞职了，声称上帝不愿意让她的余生都与打字机为伴。
In search of a modelling agency, a path that saw her face in Vogue as well as Ebony and Jet, she sent her photos all over New York, and did not care when her mother threw her out for it.
为了找一家模特经纪公司，得到一个能让她在《Vogue》、《Ebony》和《Jet》各大杂志封面露脸的机会，她将自己的照片寄给纽约的各大公司，就算气急的母亲将她赶出门，她也丝毫不在意。
Hired in a small way in the late 1950s for feature films and off-Broadway, she soon put her foot down. There were roles she approved of, and roles she would rather starve than take.
上世纪50年代末，她曾在故事片和非百老汇演出中获得屈指可数的工作机会，但很快她就下定了决心。有些角色她很喜欢，有些角色她宁愿饿死也不愿意接。
