Black actresses - Viola Davis
“I realized I spent my entire life trying to be better than my mom. That I am the daughter and the granddaughter and the great-granddaughter and the great-great-great-granddaughter of so many women whose dreams are in the graveyard. They’re women of color who worked in the tobacco fields and the cotton fields and had children by the time they were 15, left school in the 8th grade and a dream was just ambiguous to them.”
“And I realized that I wanted to have a dream. And I think that I chose acting because all my life has been filled with stories of people of color that have been filled with so much complexity and duality. And so much of my life has been filled with so much pain and humor and joyous moments that I felt the need to express that…”
“I never want to look in the face of a young actress of color and think to myself, “What’s out there for her?” The only thing worse than a graveyard, artistic graveyard, filled with women…”
“The higher purpose of my life is not the song and dance or the acclaim, but to rise up, to pull up others and leave the world and industry a better place.”
“And that’s it.
And for some reason, that reality and knowing that it just changed everything. I don’t have any time to stay up all night worrying about what someone who doesn’t love me has to say about me.
And here was a slue of people I was devaluing.
My mortality is staring me in the face.”
Viola Davis on The Tonight Show (9/20/2012)
Werk, Mama. Werrrrrrrrrrrrk.
Viola Davis at the New York premiere of her new movie “Won’t Back Down”
