“Who you are inside is bigger than your circumstances. There’s always a space inside of you that is all you and yours - your dreams, and your hopes and your love.”
— Viola Davis on what playing Aibileen in The Help taught her
I was eight years old when I decided to be an actor. And I am just so privileged to be gazing on the beautiful face of the woman who inspired me that beautiful day, and that’s Cicely Tyson.
And when I woke up and realized how difficult it was to be an actor, and how the rejection was so high, then another beautiful face graced the screen when I was in college, and that was Meryl, who just …always inspires me.
But there’s so many people involved in The Help, in lieu of mentioning all them, I just have to say that, what is there but a dream? You can’t trade in your dream for another dream. I am so proud to be an actor, and I thank the Screen Actors Guild for this award.
And I have a special, special note to the kids in Central Falls, Rhode Island, in Segue Institute of Learning in Central Falls, Rhode Island: to dream big and dream fierce.
Thank you very much.
“Of course I had trepidations. Why do I have to play the mammy? But what do you do as an actor if one of the most multifaceted and rich roles you’ve ever been given is a maid in 1962 Mississippi? Do you not take the role because you feel like in some ways it’s not a good message to send to Black people? No. The message is the quality of the work. That is the greater message… As Black women, we’re always given these seemingly devastating experiences - experiences that could absolutely break us. But what the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly. What we do as Black women is take the worst situations and create from that point.”
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Viola Davis ; Essence magazine August 2011 cover feature. (via reroutedreams)
obligatory reblog of self in honor of tonight’s wins.
Viola Davis from The Help at the SAG Awards 2012
Okay everyone else can go home, we have a winner.
There just aren’t a lot of roles for—I mean, I’m a 46-year-old black actress who doesn’t look like Halle Berry—and Halle Berry is having a hard time. You know there’s not a lot of leading roles.
“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.”
Viola Davis
The Help’s Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer in W Magazine’s Best Performances 2012 issue.
