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Self-deprecation is not an answer to keeping one's balance. I think that it's very damaging.
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
Keeping
Answer
Balance
Answers
Self
Think
Thinking
Deprecation
Damaging
More quotes by Viola Davis
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
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
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
When you're really passionate, you're going to grab hold of every rope you see, and wrap them around your arms and legs to claw your way out. And that's the way I've felt in my life.
Viola Davis
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
I have been given a lot of roles that are downtrodden, mammy-ish.
Viola Davis
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.
Viola Davis
When your passion and drive are bigger than your fears, you just dive.
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
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.
Viola Davis
You have to understand being an actress, and being an African American actress of a certain hue, I think that you have to be bold with your choices. Even when you're not bold with your choices, have people see it as bold.
Viola Davis
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
You can't be hesitant about who you are.
Viola Davis
Are there women in your world now that have given you those lessons in confidence? Oh absolutely. Meryl [Streep] does it all the time. I think she does it in a way that she doesn't even understand or think she's doing it.
Viola Davis
In my mind, I see a line. And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful, white women with their arms stretched out to me over that line, but I can't seem to get there no how. I can't seem to get over that line.
Viola Davis
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
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
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.
Viola Davis
But the biggest beauty advice I've given my daughter is every morning I say, Genesis, what are the two best parts of you? And she says my brain and my heart. And I say, You've gotta remember that, Genesis. You've gotta remember that you're not what you look like, you know? I think that's the best beauty advice I could give her.
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