It’s time for people to see us, people of colour, for what we really are: complicated.
VIOLA DAVISSometimes you take a job for the money, sometimes you take it for the location, sometimes you take it for the script; there are just a number of reasons, and ultimately what you see is the whole landscape of it. But I can tell you from behind the scenes – that’s what it is, as an actor.
More Viola Davis Quotes
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That’s why there’s so much bad acting out there, because you could see actors watching themselves.
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Even when I get the fried-chicken special of the day, I have to dig into it like it’s filet mignon.
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I am the mother of a 6-year-old now, so that’s changed my entire perspective.
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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.
VIOLA DAVIS -
I do believe that there are African Americans who have thick accents. My mom has a thick accent; my relatives have thick accents. But sometimes you have to adjust when you go into the world of film, TV, theatre, in order to make it accessible to people.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That’s how I digest it, ’cause I can press the fast-forward button and I know that I’m gonna have to continue to be an actor, continue to make choices, continue to perform in a show every week.
VIOLA DAVIS -
They say the two most important days in a person’s life were the day you were born and the day you discover why you were born.
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I love Wal-Mart. You can put that down. I love Wal-Mart. My husband and I hang out there.
VIOLA DAVIS -
Cicely Tyson was my inspiration to become an actor.
VIOLA DAVIS -
Sometimes you take a job for the money, sometimes you take it for the location, sometimes you take it for the script; there are just a number of reasons, and ultimately what you see is the whole landscape of it. But I can tell you from behind the scenes – that’s what it is, as an actor.
VIOLA DAVIS -
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’ve always just simply seen myself as an actor. And I believe that it serves me well to just think in terms of my craft. If hypothetically, I saw myself only as a sex symbol, or as some other limited stereotype, I think I would feel like a complete failure.
VIOLA DAVIS






