Viola Davis Quotes

It feels really good to embrace exactly who I am and be my sexy, to be my sexualized, to be my woman.

Creativity only resonates if you infuse real life into the work.

When you see what the deficit is, then you have to do something about it.

I am addicted to any facial product that's anti-aging.

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.

That is a huge need for a lot of women, even in 2016. You can have the most ambitious career woman, and at the end of the day, she's like, 'I just want to be a mom.

I get so excited when my daughter says something new, which she is doing every day. I can leave the house for a few hours, come back and meet a totally different person. That's very exciting to me.

When Denzel [Washington] first called me on the phone after we'd just done a reading of the film ["Fences"]. He said, "Oh Viola it was so good, wasn't it?! I'm gonna tell Russell [Hornsby] to lose a little bit of weight and..." I was just sitting there thinking, why is he calling me? And I told him, "Denzel don't you tell me to lose weight!" He said, "I'm not telling you to lose weight! I can't believe you would say that."

And this is what was fascinating to me about 'The Help'; they were ordinary people who did extraordinary things.

When you're working as an actor, you don't think that when you get out of school, it's going to be so hard to get a job. Just to get a job. Any job. Whatsoever. You don't think that people are going to see you in a certain way. Uta Hagen said this, "In my life, I see myself as just this, you know, kind of flamboyant, kind of sexy middle-aged woman. And then I see myself onscreen, and I go 'Oh my God.'" And it's the same thing with me. I didn't see myself any different from my white counterparts in school. I just didn't!

Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that's inside of you.

I think that you always want to gravitate towards people who absolutely are great at what they do and go for authenticity.

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.

Actor is just a strange profession, it really is, that you could be in front of the same people for years, and all of a sudden one thing happens, and it finally clicks.

[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.

I did want to mark the fact that it was the first African-American to win the Lead Actress category.I thought it was so progressive.

Recognition has brought me more work, because your name suddenly comes to mind when some directors are trying to cast a character. And my stage work has specifically enabled people to have faith that I can handle a role, even when it's not specifically written for an African-American. So, I'd have to say that recognition brings work. A successful movie brings more work, and that been the biggest blessing.

When I go home, I am a slug. I want to do everything completely opposite of what I do on the red carpet. I like to take off all my makeup, put on a t-shirt, be completely unassuming and just do stuff with my husband and my daughter.

I needed to make my wig ogg because I no longer wanted to apologize for who I am

Do not live someone else's life and someone else's idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that's inside of you.

I am not a writer, but I feel that when our production company is successful, we'll be able to give some young writers with fresh voices an opportunity to put their work out there.

I would love to be remembered as a person who used her life to inspire others in any way, shape or form.

You see all the young girls, and they're so skinny. I actually don't even twirl anymore. They say, "Twirl, let us see your back." I just tell 'em, "I do not twirl. If you want to see my back, when I walk away, you can take a picture of it. I'm not twirling." You know, I twirled once, and I almost fell. It looks ridiculous. So I said I'm not twirling anymore.

You cannot live to please everyone else. You have to edify, educate and fulfill your own dreams and destiny.

The internal sexism within womanhood is very ­predominant in Hollywood, because we all want to be ­successful. There's a plug to it: You all have to be skinny! You all have to be pretty! You all have to be likable, because that's the ­formula that works. On an ­executive level. On a power level. And it's not always the same working with black people, because of the internalized racism. The colorism.

I've been in this business 25 years. I've been eking out a living doing Broadway, off-Broadway... I've seen the unemployment line a lot.

As an artist, you've got to see the mess. That's what we do. We get a human being, and it's like putting together a puzzle. And the puzzle has got to be a mixture, a multifaceted mixture of human emotions, and not all of it is going to be pretty.

Eating bread in Hollywood is a no-no!

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.

My first wedding was 15 people at our condo. The second was maybe about a hundred people at this fabulous casino. And you know what? I have almost no pictures of the second one, because I put disposable cameras on the tables, because everyone said, "The best pictures are the most candid! The best pictures are the ones people just take!" So, I put disposable cameras on the tables, and guess what? There were so many kids there that those cameras were stomped on. I had so many pictures of the floor, of people's eyes, of someone's finger.

But along with all of that it was, "Oh, isn't he a great storyteller? Oh, it's that why I married him? Isn't he handsome? Oh, what am I going to make for dinner today?" I put all of that as a part of [Roses's from "Fences"] inner everyday monologue so, by the time he tells he that news and all of that I feel that it's there already.

Anything can be achieved with a good, healthy dose of courage.

I am not a glam woman - this definitely is a mask I put on for the public.

People call me a theater actor, but I'm just an actor. But I tell my friends all the time - especially a lot that do theater and haven't done a lot of TV/film - that you have so much more control over your work onstage. When you go onstage, you can really see the difference between people who can really do it, and people who are just kind of pretending to do it. There is no editor, there's nothing that's going to stop the actor from showing what they can do unless it's not a well-written role.

And that's what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves - parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it's pretty spectacular.

[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.

I would like to say something deeper, but for me, I saw a production of "Fences" in Rhode Island and a fabulous actress played Rose, but when she first came on the stage she was mad. You could just see it. She was all, "Troy stop!" So by the time you get to the revelation scene, I didn't think she loved him, so there was no loss. I think that the real tragedy and the real drama or the thing that makes you lean in is to see the love, to see the commitment. To see the fact that Rose is invested in this marriage no matter what.

I sort of feel like that's the most revolutionary thing we can do with our narrative for me as Black people is to show that we are just like you.

I always say that, like a scientist or anyone, you always want to be the problem-solver. You feel like, if you solve the greatest mystery or the greatest problem, then that makes you brilliant. It's the same thing with an actress. 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.

I'm very committed to its educational institutions, including my alma mater Central Falls High School's drama program, because I know that's what got me my start. I do everything I can to keep it alive since it made me feel like I had something to give to the world. I also support the Segue Institute for Learning, a charter school in Central Falls run by a friend of mine that my niece attends. I'm committed to that because of its proven results. They have the highest math scores of any charter school in Rhode Island.

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.

I think watching my mom gave me great inspiration, I wish that had been reinforced more verbally. It would have kept me from a lot of pain.

I just look at women sometimes and I just want to ask them, "Do you know how fabulous you are?"

You have two stark choices when you find yourself in a really desperate situation. You can either fold and cave-in to it or you can become really passionate about getting out of it. When you're really passionate, you're going to grab hold of every rope you see, and wrap them around your arms and legs to claw your way out. And that's the way I've felt in my life.

All you really need to do is shift people just a tiny bit for change to happen. It doesn't have to be huge and humongous.

I'm sorry, if you've been married for five minutes, you've sacrificed something, you've looked over at your partner and have gone, "Oh my God this is the biggest mistake I've ever made in my life." And then the next moment it's "This is the most beautiful and extraordinary human being, and I'm going to stick with it because I love them more than anyone else." That monologue to me is the universal thing, especially for women because I feel like that's the big thing with women.

I worked in television; I'm the Failed Pilot Queen, I've done so many television shows, pilots, theater ... when you do it for so long, I'm telling you, you get to the point where it becomes varied because you take what's available for a number of reasons. It's just an occupational hazard.

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".