Viola Davis
If the opportunity is not out there for you to play it, then you don't see it.Collection: Opportunity
Knowing the only way out is education, even if you don't have parents that are extraordinarily wealthy. I understand that I have to be an active participant in [my daughter's] education in order for her to thrive in the world.Collection: Daughter
It feels really good to embrace exactly who I am and be my sexy, to be my sexualized, to be my woman.Collection: Sexy
It's time for people to see us, people of colour, for what we really are: complicated.Collection: People
I would love to star in a remake of Thelma and Louise. Yep, that's the one I'd be interested in redoing.Collection: Stars
I already optioned a book called The Personal History of Rachel DuPree. I also like The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. And I love all of Octavia Butler's books. She's created some very complicated black heroines with a variety of belief systems. There are many great books out there, but those are a few of the ones that stand out.Collection: Book
I always say that, like a scientist or anyone, you always want to be the problem-solver. You feel like, if you solve the greatest mystery or the greatest problem, then that makes you brilliant. It's the same thing with an actress. You want to be able to really tackle a character and make it a fully-dimensional human being who is complicated, funny and all the things that a person could be.Collection: Character
Your internal dialogue has got to be different from what you say. And, you know, in film, hopefully that registers and speaks volumes. It’s always the unspoken word and what’s happening behind someone’s eyes that makes it so rich.Collection: Eye
Even when I get the fried-chicken special of the day, I have to dig into it like it's filet mignon.Collection: Special
I've always just simply seen myself as an actor. And I believe that it serves me well to just think in terms of my craft. If hypothetically, I saw myself only as a sex symbol, or as some other limited stereotype, I think I would feel like a complete failure.Collection: Sex
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.Collection: Character
I needed to make my wig ogg because I no longer wanted to apologize for who I amCollection: Inspiring
Eating bread in Hollywood is a no-no!Collection: Hollywood
I'm very committed to its educational institutions, including my alma mater Central Falls High School's drama program, because I know that's what got me my start. I do everything I can to keep it alive since it made me feel like I had something to give to the world. I also support the Segue Institute for Learning, a charter school in Central Falls run by a friend of mine that my niece attends. I'm committed to that because of its proven results. They have the highest math scores of any charter school in Rhode Island.Collection: Running
Ultimately, it's not your job, as an actress, to satisfy people's expectations or image of who you should be. Even in your life, you are just who you are.Collection: Jobs
When you're working as an actor, you don't think that when you get out of school, it's going to be so hard to get a job. Just to get a job. Any job. Whatsoever. You don't think that people are going to see you in a certain way. Uta Hagen said this, "In my life, I see myself as just this, you know, kind of flamboyant, kind of sexy middle-aged woman. And then I see myself onscreen, and I go 'Oh my God.'" And it's the same thing with me. I didn't see myself any different from my white counterparts in school. I just didn't!Collection: Sexy
People are just not impressed by me at home.Collection: Home
Sometimes people come in as a director, and they just want the result, and they barely want that to tell you the truth. Sometimes directors barely talk to the actors; they are so focused on the cinematic elements of the movie, getting the shot and getting the lighting right or getting the CGI effects right and all of that, and they just trust that you are just going to do what you do.Collection: People
Cicely Tyson was my inspiration to become an actor.Collection: Inspiration
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.Collection: Successful
I have to say, doing theater, that's what you're trained to do. Doing film, when I first started doing it, felt like something else entirely. It felt like the difference between, I don't know, waiting tables and painting a great work of art. It's night and day. I didn't feel like it was even acting.Collection: Art
I talk to women all the time and try to impart wisdom.Collection: Trying
I am the mother of a 6-year-old now, so that's changed my entire perspective.Collection: Mother
I've always seen myself for who I am, which is a lot of things. So, I guess that when I walk into a room, I bring all those things to a role, and I've always just simply seen myself as an actor.Collection: Who I Am
I have been given a lot of roles that are downtrodden, mammy-ish.Collection: Roles
That is a huge need for a lot of women, even in 2016. You can have the most ambitious career woman, and at the end of the day, she's like, 'I just want to be a mom.Collection: Mom
I've been in this business 25 years. I've been eking out a living doing Broadway, off-Broadway... I've seen the unemployment line a lot.Collection: Years
You see all the young girls, and they're so skinny. I actually don't even twirl anymore. They say, "Twirl, let us see your back." I just tell 'em, "I do not twirl. If you want to see my back, when I walk away, you can take a picture of it. I'm not twirling." You know, I twirled once, and I almost fell. It looks ridiculous. So I said I'm not twirling anymore.Collection: Girl
I can't deal with actors! I can't deal with myself. We're neurotic and miserable... I love doing what I'm doing, but while I'm doing it, I'm miserable.Collection: Actors
I really wanted to show [in "fences"] a marriage that is working. Not perfect, but working.Collection: Perfect
One of the people I've always wanted to emulate in pursuing that dream was Meryl Streep, in terms of the different types of roles she's been able to play and the number of different stories she's been able to tell.Collection: Dream
In my mind, I see a line. And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful, white women with their arms stretched out to me over that line, but I can't seem to get there no how. I can't seem to get over that line.Collection: Beautiful
I am addicted to any facial product that's anti-aging.Collection: Aging
And I sit in my jacuzzi with my script.Collection: Scripts
I think that I'm coming off as the biggest alcoholic in the world.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Jobs
That's why there's so much bad acting out there, because you could see actors watching themselves.Collection: Acting
My husband [Julius Tennon] and I started a production company. We've already optioned a book and some scripts to do exactly that, to create more complicated, multi-faceted roles for African-Americans, especially African-American females. I think it's important.Collection: Husband
The internal sexism within womanhood is very predominant in Hollywood, because we all want to be successful. There's a plug to it: You all have to be skinny! You all have to be pretty! You all have to be likable, because that's the formula that works. On an executive level. On a power level. And it's not always the same working with black people, because of the internalized racism. The colorism.Collection: Successful
August [Wilson] elevates in us is the average man in a way that is heroic and real and human. What you do is you sit with our pathology, you invest in our humanity. We're not walking around like walking symbols like we mean something larger. We're just moving throughout our lives and that's the power of the piece. That's revolutionary.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Thinking
That's how I digest it, 'cause I can press the fast-forward button and I know that I'm gonna have to continue to be an actor, continue to make choices, continue to perform in a show every week.Collection: Choices
I'm a sitting duck. No, seriously, I mean I wish I could say more, but I'm a sitting duck because I can't get ahead of them [cyber experts]. They're far ahead of me. That's what I learned: how vulnerable we are. It's a big, silent monster out there. That's what it feels like.Collection: Mean
Ordinary people who are just kind of just going about their lives are transformed into heroes because they have the courage to put their voices out there. I think that's a powerful message in this time of political strife.Collection: Powerful
I've been to acting school and I think that at the end of the day, when you just focus on the work and you're comfortable with who you are, that at some point someone's going to recognize your talent and give you an opportunity.Collection: School
We're in crisis mode as black actresses. It's not only in the sheer number of roles that are offered and that are out there, but the quality of the roles. The quality - and therein lies the problem. We're in deprivation mode because me, Alfre and Phylicia, we're in the same category. Whereas if you take a Caucasian actress, you have the one who are the teens, in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s - they're all different. There are roles for each of them. But you only have two or three categories for black actresses.Collection: Lying
But along with all of that it was, "Oh, isn't he a great storyteller? Oh, it's that why I married him? Isn't he handsome? Oh, what am I going to make for dinner today?" I put all of that as a part of [Roses's from "Fences"] inner everyday monologue so, by the time he tells he that news and all of that I feel that it's there already.Collection: Rose
[I listen to] "Uptown Funk", Bruno Mars, sometimes even Nina Simone and Adele. Whatever comes up, whatever floats my boat, whatever makes me tap into something in me to just decompress - I listen to that.Collection: Uptown
I want to span different genres. I want to be able to transform. I want to be able to be sexy, and funny, and quirky, and all the other things that I am. And I feel that the best way that I can achieve that is by producing.Collection: Sexy