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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.
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
Winning
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American
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Actress
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African
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Lead
More quotes by Viola Davis
Eating bread in Hollywood is a no-no!
Viola Davis
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.
Viola Davis
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.
Viola Davis
I haven't seen most of what I've done. I can't even list them. Most television jobs. I haven't seen a lot.
Viola Davis
Actor is just a strange profession, it really is, that you could be in front of the same people for years, and all of a sudden one thing happens, and it finally clicks.
Viola Davis
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.
Viola Davis
Any actor will tell you, as soon as your ego and your vanity come into the mix, it destroys your work. Completely destroys it.
Viola Davis
I have a lot of spiritual books that I read that I really, really love - everything from the Bible to Joseph Campbell, who I love. He wrote The Hero of a Thousand Faces. It's about exploring what is heroic in you. It helps me a lot.
Viola Davis
We know the road of lack of recognition, of people telling us that we can't headline a movie because black women don't translate overseas, that every time we try to break the glass ceiling, people say no, people push back. And it's everything that people don't see out there.
Viola Davis
I don't have any time to stay up all night worrying about what someone who doesn't love me has to say about me.
Viola Davis
Every artist, true artist, struggles with an overwhelming sense of feeling like you're not worthy.
Viola Davis
[Meryl Streep] just sent me an email, and I was like, That's perfect. She was like, Yes, Viola, now that you've just had your vow renewal...this is the best part of your life now. There's not anything that you don't know anymore in terms of what's good and bad out there, so now you can just fly. She's always imparting wisdom like that.
Viola Davis
Denzel [Washington] just knows the actor. He knows the process, and you don't often get that.
Viola Davis
But the biggest beauty advice I've given my daughter is every morning I say, Genesis, what are the two best parts of you? And she says my brain and my heart. And I say, You've gotta remember that, Genesis. You've gotta remember that you're not what you look like, you know? I think that's the best beauty advice I could give her.
Viola Davis
And that's what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves - parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it's pretty spectacular.
Viola Davis
I've always seen myself for who I am, which is a lot of things. So, I guess that when I walk into a room, I bring all those things to a role, and I've always just simply seen myself as an actor.
Viola Davis
I really wanted to show [in fences] a marriage that is working. Not perfect, but working.
Viola Davis
It's harder to play a quiet character because everything happens in their stream of consciousness. They're thinking and feeling the world, but they're saying very little, so then you have to communicate it through your behavior.
Viola Davis
You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.
Viola Davis
I have to say, doing theater, that's what you're trained to do. Doing film, when I first started doing it, felt like something else entirely. It felt like the difference between, I don't know, waiting tables and painting a great work of art. It's night and day. I didn't feel like it was even acting.
Viola Davis
