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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

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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
Even
Bold
Think
Actress
Thinking
African
People
Actresses
Choices
American
Understand
Certain
Hue

More quotes by Viola Davis

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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
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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
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I had several teachers who inspired me, in both the public school system and the Upward Bound program. I needed several, because I lived in such abject poverty and dysfunction. And they're still in my life today, because I consider them to be friends, actually.
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 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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The only thing that separates women of color from everyone else is opportunity.
Viola Davis
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When you pray, God puts people in your life to lead you when you cannot lead yourself.
Viola Davis
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I am the mother of a 6-year-old now, so that's changed my entire perspective.
Viola Davis
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I talk to women all the time and try to impart wisdom.
Viola Davis
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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
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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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I can't deal with actors! I can't deal with myself. We're neurotic and miserable... I love doing what I'm doing, but while I'm doing it, I'm miserable.
Viola Davis
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The sentiment that I had a little trouble with was the idea that, You change the school, you change the community. I couldn't wrap my mind around that.
Viola Davis
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I can be busy for three years and you may not even know what I'm busy doing because you only see me in a few scenes here or there, but I've been working my tail off because there's just not a lot.
Viola Davis
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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.
Viola Davis
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Relationships change us and make us grow.
Viola Davis
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The world is very good at encouraging you to go along with the status quo and at basking in your successes. But when you hit a wall in your personal life, and you screw up, people don't give you a chance to navigate your way through it and tap into what's extraordinary about you.
Viola Davis
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Any actor will tell you, as soon as your ego and your vanity come into the mix, it destroys your work. Completely destroys it.
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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When you see what the deficit is, then you have to do something about it.
Viola Davis