Viola Davis Quotes

I've done a really bad job with teaching daughter to put on makeup, but I have taught her how to put on lipstick.

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 am not a morning person, but I always work out - always.

I just hope this [Emmy] is now a part of the status quo that women of color are included in the narratives that continue to write lead roles for us.

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

Each character has their own challenges. The challenge to doing one scene is your whole history of who you are and your relationships, you only have this one shot.

If you're a boxer, you want to get the ring with a Mike Tyson or Muhammad Ali type. When you're acting, you want to get in with Meryl Streep, and that's what I did.

I don't think most people understand acting, even the people who call themselves savvy, even actors.

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 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.

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.

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.

I can be busy for three years and you may not even know what I'm busy doing because you only see me in a few scenes here or there, but I've been working my tail off because there's just not a lot.

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 had to invest in the love and understand that with the love comes the pain. So when he tells me that, the monologue is already there. Does that make sense?

You absolutely feel, as a black actress, that you've got to ride the wave because there's just so few roles. I hate to play that card, but it's the truth. There's not a lot of roles.

I think that's why August [Wilson] named her Rose [in "Fences"]; I really do. She's a rose in her sweetness and her kindness and in everything else, even her anger towards the end.

I haven't seen most of what I've done. I can't even list them. Most television jobs. I haven't seen a lot.

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

No matter what, people don't think of me for glamorous parts. I'll go to an audition or a meeting in a pretty dress, and they still think of me as depressed or embattled. Hopefully, that will change.

It made me realize again how complicated being a mother is. You have 50 million heartbreaking moments, and 100 million beautiful, joyous ones.

I think that's something that people feel that I do really well; I don't mind it, because ultimately I think the characters I play move people, and who wouldn't want to move people?

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

Each role has its own different challenges.

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.

Acting, it's the disappearance of self, disappearance of your own needs and your own wants and the kind of embracing of the character that makes it work.

Eating bread in Hollywood is a no-no!

That's why there's so much bad acting out there, because you could see actors watching themselves.

Every artist, true artist, struggles with an overwhelming sense of feeling like you're not worthy.

Cicely Tyson was my inspiration to become an actor.

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.

Self-deprecation is not an answer to keeping one's balance. I think that it's very damaging.

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.

I talk to women all the time and try to impart wisdom.

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.

Denzel [Washington] just knows the actor. He knows the process, and you don't often get that.

Lloyd Richards is another director who was like that, who was a teacher.

It was hard, that confrontation scene [in "Fences"], that was a hard one. I felt like it was relentless, I never felt like I could just drop the ball when the coverage was on him or anything else.

For me, that was a hard scene [in "Fences"] to do twenty-something times, which (laughing), I counted. That was difficult, but once I did it, I felt like I could do anything.

It's harder to work with people who are not as dedicated to their craft. It also leaves you a better actor when you finish the project, since you always feel like you've learned something.

The sentiment that I had a little trouble with was the idea that, "You change the school, you change the community." I couldn't wrap my mind around that.

My biggest fear is that a paparazzi or someone ... is going to come in my backyard and see me when I get in my pool. That would be very unfortunate.

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".

I've always seen myself for who I am, which is a lot of things.

I started a production company out of necessity, the need for great narratives for actors of color.

Can I just tell you, I think it's the most beautiful thing about young people today, it gives me so much hope for the future, that they don't really recognize race the way my generation does.