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I want my work to reflect my level of gifts and talent
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
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Talent
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More quotes by Viola Davis
The only thing that separates women of color from everyone else is opportunity.
Viola Davis
I came back from vacation and I ate everything. I mean I'm sipping cocktails by the pool, thinking I'm a size 2. And now, you know, my dress is tight. So, I need it, too. I always need to remind myself: It's okay.
Viola Davis
My husband [Julius Tennon] and I started a production company. We've already optioned a book and some scripts to do exactly that, to create more complicated, multi-faceted roles for African-Americans, especially African-American females. I think it's important.
Viola Davis
I had several teachers who inspired me, in both the public school system and the Upward Bound program. I needed several, because I lived in such abject poverty and dysfunction. And they're still in my life today, because I consider them to be friends, actually.
Viola Davis
I already optioned a book called The Personal History of Rachel DuPree. I also like The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. And I love all of Octavia Butler's books. She's created some very complicated black heroines with a variety of belief systems. There are many great books out there, but those are a few of the ones that stand out.
Viola Davis
It's always hard to be private in public, which is what acting is because you have to do thing really emotionally naked.
Viola Davis
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.
Viola Davis
Relationships change us and make us grow.
Viola Davis
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.
Viola Davis
August [Wilson] elevates in us is the average man in a way that is heroic and real and human. What you do is you sit with our pathology, you invest in our humanity. We're not walking around like walking symbols like we mean something larger. We're just moving throughout our lives and that's the power of the piece. That's revolutionary.
Viola Davis
It's not anything that is just perpetuated by White America or just perpetuated by Black America. It's just a cultural understanding that you're just not a part of the equation when it comes to sexuality and I think that people mistake your lack of opportunity with the level of your talent.
Viola Davis
You don't get the pay-off when you're playing a quiet character, so sometimes you want to just throw out all your work and say, Okay, let me do something really funny or gimmicky, just so that I can get some attention in this scene.
Viola Davis
When I go home, I am a slug. I want to do everything completely opposite of what I do on the red carpet. I like to take off all my makeup, put on a t-shirt, be completely unassuming and just do stuff with my husband and my daughter.
Viola Davis
I think sometimes you have to see a physical manifestation of your dream. Otherwise you have to hope, pray and try to conjure something in your mind to feel like it's possible.
Viola Davis
And this is what was fascinating to me about 'The Help' they were ordinary people who did extraordinary things.
Viola Davis
I am not a writer, but I feel that when our production company is successful, we'll be able to give some young writers with fresh voices an opportunity to put their work out there.
Viola Davis
Do not live someone else's life and someone else's idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that's inside of you.
Viola Davis
People often forget our emotional contribution to relationships and to marriage and that might be a completely sexist comment but, what I tried not to do [in Fences] is, I tried to just put that monologue as part of my stream of consciousness.
Viola Davis
Tyler Perry's 'Madea Goes to Jail!' Which, I have to tell you, of everything that I've ever done in my career, that's the only thing that's perked up the ears of my nieces and nephews. That is it, that's done it for them. That made me a bona fide star in their eyes!
Viola Davis
When a director can give you a word that allows you to feel less tense about yourself, to make you feel like you indeed are good enough before you even get to the work, you can't ask for anything more than that.
Viola Davis