Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Do the work. Create the character, don't wing it and don't hope for an award or the Red Carpet. At the end of day the people who stay in the line the longest are the people who are good.
Viola Davis
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Work
Wings
Good
Line
People
Stay
Longest
Create
Award
Lines
Carpet
Hope
Wing
Ends
Awards
Character
Red
More quotes by Viola Davis
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
August [Wilson] elevates in us is the average man in a way that is heroic and real and human. What you do is you sit with our pathology, you invest in our humanity. We're not walking around like walking symbols like we mean something larger. We're just moving throughout our lives and that's the power of the piece. That's revolutionary.
Viola Davis
Now, a lot of people may be surprised at that, but I'm very dedicated to working out. Usually, it's running. It clears my mind, totally. I get on the treadmill, which I just bought, and I run on that for about 40-45 minutes.
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 think that you always want to gravitate towards people who absolutely are great at what they do and go for authenticity.
Viola Davis
When you see what the deficit is, then you have to do something about it.
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
Each character has their own challenges. The challenge to doing one scene is your whole history of who you are and your relationships, you only have this one shot.
Viola Davis
We grew up in abject poverty. Acting, writing scripts and skits were a way of escaping our environment at a very young age.
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
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
Each role has its own different challenges.
Viola Davis
I think that I'm coming off as the biggest alcoholic in the world.
Viola Davis
Lloyd Richards is another director who was like that, who was a teacher.
Viola Davis
As an artist, you've got to see the mess. That's what we do. We get a human being, and it's like putting together a puzzle. And the puzzle has got to be a mixture, a multifaceted mixture of human emotions, and not all of it is going to be pretty.
Viola Davis
You don't get the pay-off when you're playing a quiet character, so sometimes you want to just throw out all your work and say, Okay, let me do something really funny or gimmicky, just so that I can get some attention in this scene.
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 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
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
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
