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I do believe that there are African Americans who have thick accents. My mom has a thick accent my relatives have thick accents. But sometimes you have to adjust when you go into the world of film, TV, theatre, in order to make it accessible to people.

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
People
Mom
Relatives
Americans
Adjust
Order
Accent
Film
Accessible
Sometimes
Accents
Believe
Thick
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African
World
Theatre

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When you see what the deficit is, then you have to do something about it.
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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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You have to understand being an actress, and being an African American actress of a certain hue, I think that you have to be bold with your choices. Even when you're not bold with your choices, have people see it as bold.
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You absolutely feel, as a black actress, that you've got to ride the wave because there's just so few roles. I hate to play that card, but it's the truth. There's not a lot of roles.
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Lloyd Richards is another director who was like that, who was a teacher.
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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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If you're a boxer, you want to get the ring with a Mike Tyson or Muhammad Ali type. When you're acting, you want to get in with Meryl Streep, and that's what I did.
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Ultimately, it's not your job, as an actress, to satisfy people's expectations or image of who you should be. Even in your life, you are just who you are.
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In my mind, I see a line. And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful, white women with their arms stretched out to me over that line, but I can't seem to get there no how. I can't seem to get over that line.
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Denzel [Washington] just knows the actor. He knows the process, and you don't often get that.
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It's time for people to see us, people of colour, for what we really are: complicated.
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I have been given a lot of roles that are downtrodden, mammy-ish.
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I did want to mark the fact that it was the first African-American to win the Lead Actress category.I thought it was so progressive.
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Any actor will tell you, as soon as your ego and your vanity come into the mix, it destroys your work. Completely destroys it.
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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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I was like, 'What is this?' Until I found out it was stress related. That's how I internalized it. I don't do that anymore. My favorite saying in the world is, 'The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.' I am telling you, I have spent so much of my life not feeling comfortable in my skin. I am just so not there anymore.
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I've always just simply seen myself as an actor. And I believe that it serves me well to just think in terms of my craft. If hypothetically, I saw myself only as a sex symbol, or as some other limited stereotype, I think I would feel like a complete failure.
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