The more I'm pushed in a position of leadership and I know I have to be the mouthpiece for so many other people who can't speak for themselves, the more confidence I'm gaining.
— Viola Davis
I tell my daughter every morning, 'Now, what are the two most important parts of you?' And she says, 'My head and my heart.' Because that's what I've learned in the foxhole: What gets you through life is strength of character and strength of spirit and love.
I think I've lived long enough to understand that plans really are very overrated.
What excites me is just taking some time to breathe in life. The mundane is very exciting.
You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.
Because I grew up in such tight spaces, I don't get manicures, pedicures. I'm not into cars, but I am into a fabulous house. I wanted the spiral staircase, clean sheets on the bed, to be able to take a shower.
There's got to be a voice deep within you that is untouched by definitions. And it is there that you become divinely who you are.
When people come into the theater, whether it's the screen or the stage, they've gotta be transported and transformed.
Those things that we probably are ashamed of as human beings, certain things that no one would ever talk about - as actors, when we transform into a character, we empathize with those moments.
I stumbled onto the best profession to heal my childhood: the only one that lets you release and express whatever is ugly and messy and beautiful about your life. We're in the business of creating human beings. The more we spew, and the more honestly we do it, the better. Try that on Wall Street.
That's always the biggest surprise when people meet me: how buoyant I am and how fun and light I am.
I feel the same way about Shondaland I feel about Africa and Greece. I feel pretty in both places. Men look at me like I'm a novelty, and women think I'm just cool. I feel absolutely at home immediately. I'm not altering myself to fit in. I'm walking in just as I am. And there are open arms stretched out to greet me.
What it meant for me to win the Emmy is I found it. It's not just the award. It's what it's going to mean to young girls - young brown girls, especially. When they saw a physical manifestation of a dream, I felt like I had fulfilled a purpose.
I would like to say that I'm a walking poster board for feminism and women's liberation, but there are things that I do in my life that deeply, deeply fall short of being a statement for being a strong woman. I am flawed as much as anyone else.
My grandmom worked as a maid for most of her life, and she worked in the tobacco and the cotton fields, whatever she could get.
I know I'm not the best, but I'm proud of myself.
It feels like my hard work has paid off, but at the same time, I still have the impostor, you know, syndrome. I still feel like I'm going to wake up, and everybody's going to see me for the hack I am.
I think tapping into one's power and one's potential is a very frightening thing.
This is the richest country in the world. There's no reason kids should be going to school hungry. Food is something that everyone should have. It just is.
I don't know why directing is not something I'm interested in.
Acting is not rocket science, but it is an art form. What you are doing is illuminating humanity. Or not.
I cannot believe my life. I just can't. I'm so blessed.
I did everything to get food. I have stolen for food. I have jumped in huge garbage bins with maggots for food. I have befriended people in the neighborhood who I knew had mothers who cooked three meals a day for food, and I sacrificed a childhood for food and grew up in immense shame.
I just want different narratives for people of color, especially women of color. I just want something that's different. I don't want us to be put in a box. I want it to be kind of a redefinition of who were are. If I can even achieve that in a tiny way, I'll be good. I'll be good.
'Rebel' is not a word I would describe for myself, but I feel like I was a total rebel being an actor. It made me feel like there was something in me, a passion, a love - and that I didn't just squelch it.
So many women characters are extensions of male fantasy.
I look back on those early days in the theater like the beginning of a love affair, when you're totally in love with the work, and that's all there is.
The only thing that separates women of color from everyone else is opportunity.
I think women are very complicated human beings, and I think there's an oversimplification of women when you see them on screen.
My grandmother's house was a one room shack.
I think sometimes what people miss about black people is that we're complicated, that we are indeed messy, that we do our best with what we've been given. We come into the world exactly like you. It's just that there are circumstances in the culture that are dictated and put on our lives that we have to fight against.
Your job as an actor is to piece together whatever you've learned in your training, or whatever you have experienced in your life, to piece together a person.
Self-deprecation is not the answer to humility.
'Fences' is under the headline of the project of my lifetime. It is the most perfect and undeniably developed narrative that I've ever worked on.
I've had to sink my teeth into a role that was probably a fried-chicken dinner and make it into a filet mignon.
Your ability to adapt to failure, and navigate your way out of it, absolutely 100 percent makes you who you are.
When you are an actor, you are in the most powerless position in this business.
Sometimes there is no sugar-coating it. Sometimes you have to challenge people's belief systems in a progressive way.
The big 'Aha!' moment is that the trauma never goes away.
We didn't have money all the time to do laundry. A lot of the time, we didn't have soap or hot water. We were smart kids academically, but we'd go to school smelling.
When you're poor, you are invisible. Every poor person will tell you nobody sees you. So being famous was me just wanting to be seen.
August Wilson is the one writer that writes about men like my father, who had a fifth grade education, who was a janitor at McDonald's.
I was bullied at school. The black girl in Central Falls, Rhode Island, in 1973. There'd be 8 or 10 boys; I would count them as I was running.
I truly believe that the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
There's no prerequisites to worthiness. You're born worthy, and I think that's a message a lot of women need to hear.
I'm the journeyman actor that you saw in one scene here, two scenes there. I've been eking out a living doing theater - Broadway, Off Broadway - film supporting roles, that I'm just excited to be a part of the conversation.
People don't understand that when you come into any theatrical experience, you've got to come locked and loaded, that you're a part of the experience, too. You can't come with your arms crossed. Be open to it.
I don't see a lot of narratives written where a woman who looks like me gets to be beautiful and sexualized and upwardly mobile, middle-class, funny, quirky. They're very seldom written.
You're only reduced to a cliche if you don't humanize a character.
I still feel like when I walk on the set, I'm starting from scratch, until I realize, 'OK, I do know what I'm doing. I'm human.'
