Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Wanted
Type
Play
Roles
Different
Numbers
Streep
Always
Term
Emulate
People
Tell
Pursuing
Dream
Types
Stories
Terms
Able
Number

More quotes by Viola Davis

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Viola Davis
Image
I just look at women sometimes and I just want to ask them, Do you know how fabulous you are?
Viola Davis
Image
Sometimes you see how humanity can rise above any kind of cultural ills and hate that a person's capacity to love and communicate and forgive can be bigger than anything else.
Viola Davis
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I want to span different genres. I want to be able to transform. I want to be able to be sexy, and funny, and quirky, and all the other things that I am. And I feel that the best way that I can achieve that is by producing.
Viola Davis
Image
I am not a glam woman - this definitely is a mask I put on for the public.
Viola Davis
Image
I have been given a lot of roles that are downtrodden, mammy-ish.
Viola Davis
Image
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.
Viola Davis
Image
I had to invest in the love and understand that with the love comes the pain. So when he tells me that, the monologue is already there. Does that make sense?
Viola Davis
Image
If the opportunity is not out there for you to play it, then you don't see it.
Viola Davis
Image
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
Image
I want my work to reflect my level of gifts and talent
Viola Davis
Image
I guess they say, Necessity is the mother of invention because you have two stark choices when you find yourself in a really desperate situation. You can either fold and cave-in to it or you can become really passionate about getting out of it.
Viola Davis
Image
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
Image
But along with all of that it was, Oh, isn't he a great storyteller? Oh, it's that why I married him? Isn't he handsome? Oh, what am I going to make for dinner today? I put all of that as a part of [Roses's from Fences] inner everyday monologue so, by the time he tells he that news and all of that I feel that it's there already.
Viola Davis
Image
It would be great to bust through and make history. But what's more important is the opportunity to continue to get roles that are complicated and wonderful, to be a part of the narrative and to get to do what our counterparts are able to do. It doesn't just stop at holding an award.
Viola Davis