Viola Davis

All you really need to do is shift people just a tiny bit for change to happen. It doesn’t have to be huge and humongous.

Viola Davis

Any actor will tell you, as soon as your ego and your vanity come into the mix, it destroys your work. Completely destroys it.

Viola Davis

As an actor, every opportunity, every role, everything that I do is an opportunity to have someone have a human experience with my work. I don’t just want it to be about a cute wardrobe and a high paycheck.

Viola Davis

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 Davis

Do not live someone else’s life and someone else’s idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that’s inside of you.

Viola Davis

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

Viola Davis

I always feel terrified whenever I put my work out there to be seen, to be scrutinized. I think it’s a very vulnerable thing that we are asked to do.

Viola Davis

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.

Viola Davis

I feel that confidence in women – especially young girls of color – but women, in general, is so important. It is so important for us to arm ourselves and become powerful at a very young age.

Viola Davis

I have been down and out, living in Brooklyn, no money even for a subway, no food whatsoever, like, I remember just sitting in my room all day – even my television wasn’t working!

Viola Davis