Viola Davis Quotes

At the end of the day, nobody can tell you how to tackle failure or how to handle change. 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

• People
• World
• Giving
• Wall

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Quotes to Explore

• And that's what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves - parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it's pretty spectacular.

  

  Viola Davis
  • People
  • Believe
  • Acting

• You can't be hesitant about who you are.

  

  Viola Davis
  • Hesitant

• And this is what was fascinating to me about 'The Help'; they were ordinary people who did extraordinary things.

  

  Viola Davis
  • People
  • Helping
  • Extraordinary

• My husband [Julius Tennon] and I started a production company. We've already optioned a book and some scripts to do exactly that, to create more complicated, multi-faceted roles for African-Americans, especially African-American females. I think it's important.

  

  Viola Davis
  • Thinking
  • Important
  • Book

• Creativity only resonates if you infuse real life into the work.

  

  Viola Davis
  • Real
  • Creativity

• I guess they say, "Necessity is the mother of invention" because you have two stark choices when you find yourself in a really desperate situation. You can either fold and cave-in to it or you can become really passionate about getting out of it.

  

  Viola Davis
  • Mother
  • Choices
  • Passionate

• Denzel [Washington] just knows the actor. He knows the process, and you don't often get that.

  

  Viola Davis
  • Knows
  • Actors
  • Process

• 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
  • House
  • Joy
  • Acting

• 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
  • Believe
  • Thinking
  • Term

• 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
  • Passionate
  • Arms
  • Legs

• I haven't seen most of what I've done. I can't even list them. Most television jobs. I haven't seen a lot.

  

  Viola Davis
  • Done
  • Jobs
  • Television

• 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
  • Pool
  • Unfortunate
  • Paparazzi

• Even when I get the fried-chicken special of the day, I have to dig into it like it's filet mignon.

  

  Viola Davis
  • Special
  • Chickens

• I always say that, like a scientist or anyone, you always want to be the problem-solver. You feel like, if you solve the greatest mystery or the greatest problem, then that makes you brilliant. It's the same thing with an actress. You want to be able to really tackle a character and make it a fully-dimensional human being who is complicated, funny and all the things that a person could be.

  

  Viola Davis
  • Character
  • Problem
  • Mystery

• 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
  • People
  • Emotional
  • Forget

• It's harder to work with people who are not as dedicated to their craft. It also leaves you a better actor when you finish the project, since you always feel like you've learned something.

  

  Viola Davis
  • Feels
  • Actors
  • Dedicated

• If you're a boxer, you want to get the ring with a Mike Tyson or Muhammad Ali type. When you're acting, you want to get in with Meryl Streep, and that's what I did.

  

  Viola Davis
  • Acting
  • Rings
  • Muhammad

• I talk to women all the time and try to impart wisdom.

  

  Viola Davis
  • Trying
  • Impart

• 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
  • May
  • Scene
  • Three

• When you're working as an actor, you don't think that when you get out of school, it's going to be so hard to get a job. Just to get a job. Any job. Whatsoever. You don't think that people are going to see you in a certain way.

  

  Viola Davis
  • People
  • Thinking
  • School

• And I sit in my jacuzzi with my script.

  

  Viola Davis
  • Scripts
  • Jacuzzi

• When Denzel [Washington] first called me on the phone after we'd just done a reading of the film ["Fences"]. He said, "Oh Viola it was so good, wasn't it?! I'm gonna tell Russell [Hornsby] to lose a little bit of weight and..." I was just sitting there thinking, why is he calling me? And I told him, "Denzel don't you tell me to lose weight!" He said, "I'm not telling you to lose weight! I can't believe you would say that."

  

  Viola Davis
  • Believe
  • Thinking
  • Done

• They say, 'To serve is to love,' and I think to serve is to heal, too.

  

  Viola Davis
  • Thinking
  • Heal

• The internal sexism within womanhood is very ­predominant in Hollywood, because we all want to be ­successful. There's a plug to it: You all have to be skinny! You all have to be pretty! You all have to be likable, because that's the ­formula that works. On an ­executive level. On a power level. And it's not always the same working with black people, because of the internalized racism. The colorism.

  

  Viola Davis
  • People
  • Black
  • Successful