American - Actress | August 11, 1965 -
It became motivation as opposed to something else - the thing about poverty is that it starts affecting your mind and your spirit because people don't see you. I chose from a very young age that I didn't want that for my life. And it very much has helped me appreciate and value the things that are in my life now because I never had it.
Viola Davis
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It's a dream to be able to just play a multi-faceted character.
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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. If you can achieve that, you feel great. You so rarely get to do that as an actress in general, but as a black actress, it's almost never.
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Flashy characters are more entertaining to people because you get it. You don't have to work to get someone who says what they mean and says what they think. They're out there. It's harder to play a quiet character because everything happens in their stream of consciousness.
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People who are alone all the time never grow. Those hermits just stay the same. It's only through relationships. Relationships change us and make us grow.
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I have been given a lot of roles that are downtrodden, mammy-ish. A lot of lawyers or doctors who have names but absolutely no lives. You're going to get your three or four scenes; you're not going to be able to show what you can do.
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When you grow up in abject poverty, you see people exactly the way they are.
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Vanity destroys your work. That's the one thing you have to let go of as an actor. I don't care how sexy or beautiful any woman is. At the end of the day, she has to take her makeup off. At the end of the day, she's more than just pretty.
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My whole thing is, I've got to be as good, as courageous as what's written on the page.
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We have to stop thinking about diversity and start thinking about inclusion. That's what you can take from August Wilson. That there are whole cultures out there living experiences exactly like yours, and their stories can be just as dynamic, sold in the foreign market, put as many butts in the seats as any Caucasian movie out there.
DiversityStartThinkingYouLiving
When you see a parent pass, and you literally are there, and you're sitting at that deathbed, man, and you have to tell them to go, it defines life for what it really is.
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Acting came from growing up in dysfunction. I mean, a lot of great times, but a lot of dysfunction.
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