Viola Davis Quotes
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Relationships change us and make us grow.
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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.
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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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I don’t want anyone putting any limits on me.
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[Meryl Streep] just sent me an email, and I was like, "That's perfect." She was like, "Yes, Viola, now that you've just had your vow renewal...this is the best part of your life now. There's not anything that you don't know anymore in terms of what's good and bad out there, so now you can just fly." She's always imparting wisdom like that.
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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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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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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 am not a glam woman - this definitely is a mask I put on for the public.
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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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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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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 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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When you see what the deficit is, then you have to do something about it.
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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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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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Every artist, true artist, struggles with an overwhelming sense of feeling like you're not worthy.
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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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You absolutely feel, as a black actress, that you've got to ride the wave because there's just so few roles. I hate to play that card, but it's the truth. There's not a lot of roles.
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I've always seen myself for who I am, which is a lot of things.
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It's time for people to see us, people of colour, for what we really are: complicated.
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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.