Viola Davis Quotes
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You cannot live to please everyone else. You have to edify, educate and fulfill your own dreams and destiny.
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The only thing that separates women of color from everyone else is opportunity.
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It was hard, that confrontation scene [in "Fences"], that was a hard one. I felt like it was relentless, I never felt like I could just drop the ball when the coverage was on him or anything else.
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[Denzel Washington] was rustling with something and when he came back it was with a word about loving myself and the body that I'm in because I was still going on and on about the weight thing. I just liked that, because what people don't understand is that so much of what blocks us as actors is so personal.
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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.
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They say the two most important days in a person's life were the day you were born and the day you discover why you were born.
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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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That's how I digest it, 'cause I can press the fast-forward button and I know that I'm gonna have to continue to be an actor, continue to make choices, continue to perform in a show every week.
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When you shoot a scene, you remember every moment. You remember when your head went down, your head went up. You don't see little quirks, little eye movements, little lip movements. Once again, you become completely vain when you're watching it in a way that you weren't when you were shooting it. And the vanity, what it makes you focus on are everything that has nothing to do with the scene and everything to do with your own ego.
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Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that's inside of you.
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I think sometimes you have to see a physical manifestation of your dream. Otherwise you have to hope, pray and try to conjure something in your mind to feel like it's possible.
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I came back from vacation and I ate everything. I mean I'm sipping cocktails by the pool, thinking I'm a size 2. And now, you know, my dress is tight. So, I need it, too. I always need to remind myself: It's okay.
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I really wanted to show [in "fences"] a marriage that is working. Not perfect, but working.
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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.
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It made me realize again how complicated being a mother is. You have 50 million heartbreaking moments, and 100 million beautiful, joyous ones.
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To me, it's always a luxury to be able to work with the best of the best because they make it easier for you to do what you do.
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Cicely Tyson was my inspiration to become an actor.
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And "classically not beautiful" is a fancy term for saying ugly. And denouncing you. And erasing you.
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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.
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I have been given a lot of roles that are downtrodden, mammy-ish.
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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.
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There are all these awards that you've never heard of, and you get nominated, and suddenly you're at these awards shows, so you really don't care if you win. You really don't. You're going there, you're getting dressed up. And then you get to the awards show, and you sit down. You walk the red carpet. Everybody loves you. It's great. You sit down, and all of a sudden your category comes up, and you get nervous. And it's a complicated emotion, because it's not like you absolutely want to win, but then you don't want to lose.
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I had to invest in the love and understand that with the love comes the pain. So when he tells me that, the monologue is already there. Does that make sense?
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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.