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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.

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
Look
Pounds
Looks
Mess
Thinking
Pictures
Growing
High
School
Remember
Graduated
Back
Fats

More quotes by Viola Davis

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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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I think at the end of the day she [Rose from Fences] is a strong woman in the truest sense of the word. I think all of that is in the narrative it's already there. The hope is there the playfulness is there it's there. I wish I could take credit for it, but it's there.
Viola Davis
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Let me tell you something: The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.
Viola Davis
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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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I would love to be remembered as a person who used her life to inspire others in any way, shape or form.
Viola Davis
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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
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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.
Viola Davis
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I want my work to reflect my level of gifts and talent
Viola Davis
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I just look at women sometimes and I just want to ask them, Do you know how fabulous you are?
Viola Davis
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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
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It was hard, that confrontation scene [in Fences], that was a hard one. I felt like it was relentless, I never felt like I could just drop the ball when the coverage was on him or anything else.
Viola Davis
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Even when I go shopping, I don't shop as a woman. The only time I shop is when I need something, and I'm in and out in less than 30 minutes, so I have no energy to look at 50 million gowns and styles and make sketches and think about heels. I'm not girly in that way. I'm relying on the stylist to do 99 percent of the work.
Viola Davis
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That is a huge need for a lot of women, even in 2016. You can have the most ambitious career woman, and at the end of the day, she's like, 'I just want to be a mom.
Viola Davis
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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.
Viola Davis
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Lloyd Richards is another director who was like that, who was a teacher.
Viola Davis
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I have been given a lot of roles that are downtrodden, mammy-ish.
Viola Davis
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Denzel [Washington] just knows the actor. He knows the process, and you don't often get that.
Viola Davis
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We as artists cannot be politicians. We as artists can only be truth-tellers.
Viola Davis
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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.
Viola Davis
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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.
Viola Davis