3 Life Lessons from Actor Marque Richardson

Who knew that free breakfast burritos could be so influential? Without them, Marque Richardson might not have ever returned to the world of acting.

“It was just a hobby. A way to make money. A way to get free breakfast burritos,” Richardson says. At the tender age of 7-years-old, his family moved from San Diego to Los Angeles for him to pursue his craft. As a shy kid, though, he stayed away from the industry until he was a pre-teen. Now as a 33-year-old man, Richardson has been immortalized on the big-and-small screen thanks to his breakout role as Reggie in Dear White People which was just renewed for its fourth-and-final season on Netflix.

When we meet at Neighbors Café, a trendy coffee shop nestled inside of the painfully trendy 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, it’s a mild-weathered Friday afternoon. He’s wearing dark sunglasses and a denim jacket adorned with an assortment of buttons and patches. On the back, there’s a roaring black panther. On the front, I spot a ‘Feminist’ patch stitched across his heart.

While the visuals on his jacket show a sense of whimsy (as can be seen in the photos we captured), they effectively broadcast their own micro-messages. So did Richardson. Throughout our conversation, it became clear that he has rid himself of any shyness and dropped some pretty valuable life lessons boiled down to these…