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.
VIOLA DAVISIt’s time for people to see us, people of colour, for what we really are: complicated.
More Viola Davis Quotes
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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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Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that’s inside of you.
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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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[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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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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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.
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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 have been given a lot of roles that are downtrodden, mammy-ish.
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I think sometimes you have to see a physical manifestation of your dream. Otherwise you have to hope, pray and try to conjure something in your mind to feel like it’s possible.
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Relationships change us and make us grow.
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When you pray, God puts people in your life to lead you when you cannot lead yourself.
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I would love to star in a remake of Thelma and Louise. Yep, that’s the one I’d be interested in redoing.
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I guess they say, “Necessity is the mother of invention” because 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.
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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.
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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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I needed to make my wig ogg because I no longer wanted to apologize for who I am
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I can’t deal with actors! I can’t deal with myself. We’re neurotic and miserable… I love doing what I’m doing, but while I’m doing it, I’m miserable.
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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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And “classically not beautiful” is a fancy term for saying ugly. And denouncing you. And erasing you.
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When you see what the deficit is, then you have to do something about it.
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I just look at women sometimes and I just want to ask them, “Do you know how fabulous you are?”
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I’ve been to acting school and I think that at the end of the day, when you just focus on the work and you’re comfortable with who you are, that at some point someone’s going to recognize your talent and give you an opportunity.
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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 want my work to reflect my level of gifts and talent.
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Anything can be achieved with a good, healthy dose of courage.
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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.
VIOLA DAVIS