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One of the people I've always wanted to emulate in pursuing that dream was Meryl Streep, in terms of the different types of roles she's been able to play and the number of different stories she's been able to tell.

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
Always
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Emulate
People
Tell
Pursuing
Dream
Types
Stories
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Able
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Type
Play
Roles
Different
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Streep

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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 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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No matter what, people don't think of me for glamorous parts. I'll go to an audition or a meeting in a pretty dress, and they still think of me as depressed or embattled. Hopefully, that will change.
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I want my work to reflect my level of gifts and talent
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I've always seen myself for who I am, which is a lot of things.
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I think that enjoying the fruits of one's labor is very different than arrogance. And when I was younger, I didn't know the difference. I thought that if you were gracious, that meant that you somehow were getting ahead of yourself. And I felt self-deprecation kept you balanced.
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I look back at pictures of myself and I remember thinking, I was so fat when I was growing up. I was 165 pounds when I graduated from high school. I was a mess.
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I think sometimes what people miss about black people is that we're complicated.
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Every artist, true artist, struggles with an overwhelming sense of feeling like you're not worthy.
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When you're working as an actor, you don't think that when you get out of school, it's going to be so hard to get a job. Just to get a job. Any job. Whatsoever. You don't think that people are going to see you in a certain way.
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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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Creativity only resonates if you infuse real life into the work.
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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.
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The only thing that separates women of color from everyone else is opportunity.
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Just because I was 30 doesn't mean I was grown. God, I was such an idiot. I was an absolute idiot at 30. And I grew up.
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Your internal dialogue has got to be different from what you say. And, you know, in film, hopefully that registers and speaks volumes. It’s always the unspoken word and what’s happening behind someone’s eyes that makes it so rich.
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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.
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Sometimes you take a job for the money, sometimes you take it for the location, sometimes you take it for the script there are just a number of reasons, and ultimately what you see is the whole landscape of it. But I can tell you from behind the scenes - that's what it is, as an actor.
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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'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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