Viola Davis Quotes
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There's a big difference in doing a play or doing any project that not a lot of people see and then a project that you know everyone will see. There is more pressure, performance anxiety per se. And then when you do and what you love is really put to test.
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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 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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When you see what the deficit is, then you have to do something about it.
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I already optioned a book called The Personal History of Rachel DuPree. I also like The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. And I love all of Octavia Butler's books. She's created some very complicated black heroines with a variety of belief systems. There are many great books out there, but those are a few of the ones that stand out.
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I can't speak for the Kathryn Stockett, but I would guess that she feels proud of the progress the South has made because, growing up, she experienced a very different Mississippi than the one that exists today.
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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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It's time for people to see us, people of colour, for what we really are: complicated.
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Eating bread in Hollywood is a no-no!
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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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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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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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Sometimes you see how humanity can rise above any kind of cultural ills and hate that a person's capacity to love and communicate and forgive can be bigger than anything else.
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Even when I go shopping, I don't shop as a woman. The only time I shop is when I need something, and I'm in and out in less than 30 minutes, so I have no energy to look at 50 million gowns and styles and make sketches and think about heels. I'm not girly in that way. I'm relying on the stylist to do 99 percent of the work.
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I’m a black woman who is from Central Falls, Rhode Island. I’m dark skinned. I’m quirky. I’m shy. I’m strong. I’m guarded. I’m weak at times. I’m sensual. I’m not overtly sexual. I am so many things in so many ways and I will never see myself on screen. And the reason I will never see myself up on screen is because that does not translate with being black.
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For me, that was a hard scene [in "Fences"] to do twenty-something times, which (laughing), I counted. That was difficult, but once I did it, I felt like I could do anything.
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Every artist, true artist, struggles with an overwhelming sense of feeling like you're not worthy.
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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 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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If the opportunity is not out there for you to play it, then you don't see it.
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I think that you always want to gravitate towards people who absolutely are great at what they do and go for authenticity.
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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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I think that what happens so often on screen is high-stake moments tends to look too pretty. And I just don't think it's honest.
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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.