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I don't think most people understand acting, even the people who call themselves savvy, even actors.

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
Call
Acting
Actors
Understand
Even
Think
Thinking
People
Savvy

More quotes by 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.
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Anything can be achieved with a good, healthy dose of courage.
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I have been given a lot of roles that are downtrodden, mammy-ish.
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I am not a morning person, but I always work out - always.
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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 can't speak for the Kathryn Stockett, but I would guess that she feels proud of the progress the South has made because, growing up, she experienced a very different Mississippi than the one that exists today.
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Relationships change us and make us grow.
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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.
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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
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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
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I really wanted to show [in fences] a marriage that is working. Not perfect, but working.
Viola Davis
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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.
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The only thing that separates women of color from everyone else is opportunity.
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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
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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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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
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My biggest fear is that a paparazzi or someone ... is going to come in my backyard and see me when I get in my pool. That would be very unfortunate.
Viola Davis
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Knowing the only way out is education, even if you don't have parents that are extraordinarily wealthy. I understand that I have to be an active participant in [my daughter's] education in order for her to thrive in the world.
Viola Davis
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I just hope this [Emmy] is now a part of the status quo that women of color are included in the narratives that continue to write lead roles for us.
Viola Davis
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You cannot live to please everyone else. You have to edify, educate and fulfill your own dreams and destiny.
Viola Davis