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I have been given a lot of roles that are downtrodden, mammy-ish.

Viola Davis

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Viola Davis
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: August 11
Actress
Film Actor
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Television Producer
St. Matthews
South Carolina
La Viola Davis
Downtrodden
Roles
Given
Mammy

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I get so excited when my daughter says something new, which she is doing every day. I can leave the house for a few hours, come back and meet a totally different person. That's very exciting to me.
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That's how I digest it, 'cause I can press the fast-forward button and I know that I'm gonna have to continue to be an actor, continue to make choices, continue to perform in a show every week.
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It made me realize again how complicated being a mother is. You have 50 million heartbreaking moments, and 100 million beautiful, joyous ones.
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I've been in this business 25 years. I've been eking out a living doing Broadway, off-Broadway... I've seen the unemployment line a lot.
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I really want my acting to be definitive a lot of times, but I must feel like in any given moment there is a lot of things going on with Rose. I kept telling Denzel [Washington] throughout filming [Fences] that the house is her joy and her tomb.
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I really wanted to show [in fences] a marriage that is working. Not perfect, but working.
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If the opportunity is not out there for you to play it, then you don't see it.
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Every artist, true artist, struggles with an overwhelming sense of feeling like you're not worthy.
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Each character has their own challenges. The challenge to doing one scene is your whole history of who you are and your relationships, you only have this one shot.
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The world is very good at encouraging you to go along with the status quo and at basking in your successes. But when you hit a wall in your personal life, and you screw up, people don't give you a chance to navigate your way through it and tap into what's extraordinary about you.
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It's always hard to be private in public, which is what acting is because you have to do thing really emotionally naked.
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Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that's inside of you.
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I just look at women sometimes and I just want to ask them, Do you know how fabulous you are?
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I didn't see myself any different from my white counterparts in school. I just didn't! I thought I could do what they did. And what I didn't do well, I thought people were going to give me the opportunity to do well, because maybe they saw my talent, so they would give me a chance. I had no idea that they would see me completely different.
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I think that's why August [Wilson] named her Rose [in Fences] I really do. She's a rose in her sweetness and her kindness and in everything else, even her anger towards the end.
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We grew up in abject poverty. Acting, writing scripts and skits were a way of escaping our environment at a very young age.
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Lloyd Richards is another director who was like that, who was a teacher.
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I would love to be remembered as a person who used her life to inspire others in any way, shape or form.
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I talk to women all the time and try to impart wisdom.
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When your passion and drive are bigger than your fears, you just dive.
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