Viola Davis Quotes
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Relationships change us and make us grow.
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I didn't see myself any different from my white counterparts in school. I just didn't! I thought I could do what they did. And what I didn't do well, I thought people were going to give me the opportunity to do well, because maybe they saw my talent, so they would give me a chance. I had no idea that they would see me completely different.
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I would love to star in a remake of Thelma and Louise. Yep, that's the one I'd be interested in redoing.
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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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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.
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I have been given a lot of roles that are downtrodden, mammy-ish.
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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".
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I don't think most people understand acting, even the people who call themselves savvy, even actors.
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Every artist, true artist, struggles with an overwhelming sense of feeling like you're not worthy.
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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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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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I am not a glam woman - this definitely is a mask I put on for the public.
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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.
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When you see what the deficit is, then you have to do something about it.
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I have a lot of spiritual books that I read that I really, really love - everything from the Bible to Joseph Campbell, who I love. He wrote The Hero of a Thousand Faces. It's about exploring what is heroic in you. It helps me a lot.
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It's not anything that is just perpetuated by White America or just perpetuated by Black America. It's just a cultural understanding that you're just not a part of the equation when it comes to sexuality and I think that people mistake your lack of opportunity with the level of your talent.
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I love Wal-Mart. You can put that down. I love Wal-Mart. My husband and I hang out there.
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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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Let me tell you something: The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.
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Acting, it's the disappearance of self, disappearance of your own needs and your own wants and the kind of embracing of the character that makes it work.
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I felt that there could be some anger. There could be some frustration that he has the tendency to take over the room, but I wanted all of those things to show in the grays of her hair and the fact that her hips are much wider than they probably were when she met him. I wanted it to show in the fact that her hair is not done up all the time. I wanted it to be a part of that every day that wasn't in your face. Because then for me, that's overacting. To me, that's not "being." I wanted Rose [in "Fences"] to be many things.
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Tyler Perry's 'Madea Goes to Jail!' Which, I have to tell you, of everything that I've ever done in my career, that's the only thing that's perked up the ears of my nieces and nephews. That is it, that's done it for them. That made me a bona fide star in their eyes!
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It feels really good to embrace exactly who I am and be my sexy, to be my sexualized, to be my woman.
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[I listen to] "Uptown Funk", Bruno Mars, sometimes even Nina Simone and Adele. Whatever comes up, whatever floats my boat, whatever makes me tap into something in me to just decompress - I listen to that.