I don’t want anyone putting any limits on me.
VIOLA DAVISCicely Tyson was my inspiration to become an actor.
More Viola Davis Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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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When you see what the deficit is, then you have to do something about it.
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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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Your internal dialogue has got to be different from what you say. And, you know, in film, hopefully that registers and speaks volumes. It’s always the unspoken word and what’s happening behind someone’s eyes that makes it so rich.
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And this is what was fascinating to me about ‘The Help’; they were ordinary people who did extraordinary things.
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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 want my work to reflect my level of gifts and talent.
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Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that’s inside of you.
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One of the people I’ve always wanted to emulate in pursuing that dream was Meryl Streep, in terms of the different types of roles she’s been able to play and the number of different stories she’s been able to tell.
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Let me tell you something: The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.
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I’m a sitting duck. No, seriously, I mean I wish I could say more, but I’m a sitting duck because I can’t get ahead of them [cyber experts]. They’re far ahead of me. That’s what I learned: how vulnerable we are. It’s a big, silent monster out there. That’s what it feels like.
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I really wanted to show [in fences] a marriage that is working. Not perfect, but working.
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Ultimately, it’s not your job, as an actress, to satisfy people’s expectations or image of who you should be. Even in your life, you are just who you are.
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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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Self-deprecation is not an answer to keeping one’s balance. I think that it’s very damaging.
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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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I want to span different genres. I want to be able to transform. I want to be able to be sexy, and funny, and quirky, and all the other things that I am. And I feel that the best way that I can achieve that is by producing.
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We grew up in abject poverty. Acting, writing scripts and skits were a way of escaping our environment at a very young age.
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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.
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I think that I’m coming off as the biggest alcoholic in the world.
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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’s time for people to see us, people of colour, for what we really are: complicated.
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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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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.
VIOLA DAVIS