How Viola Davis Is Using Her Powerful Voice
How Viola Davis Is Using Her Powerful Voice Javascript must be enabled to use this site. Please enable Javascript in your browser and try again. × Search search POPULAR SEARCHES SUGGESTED LINKS Join AARP for just $9 per year when you sign up for a 5-year term. Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine. Leaving AARP.org Website You are now leaving AARP.org and going to a website that is not operated by AARP. A different privacy policy and terms of service will apply. Close
And in a year many would describe as one of the most difficult in modern times — , national economic decline, racial tension and political divisiveness fueled by a — Davis, who has more than 10 million followers on her social media accounts, has emerged as a powerful voice not only on the modern-day American Black experience but also on the suffering and poverty that transect racial lines. Of course she could have gotten made up for her interview today. But for Davis, 55, offering herself plainly is a hard-won achievement, as is the self-confidence she has built, bit by bit, that allows her to expose herself so freely. You can hear that confidence in her voice — not simply deep and melodic but full of intention — both when she is deadly serious and when she is busting out in joyous laughter. It is the voice of someone at the top of her game, and someone who once, at the very beginning, was at the bottom. If only for that reason, perhaps we should listen. Williams + Hirakawa/AUGUST
• Doubt (2008): Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress • Fences (2010): Tony Award • The Help (2011): Academy Award nomination for best actress • How to Get Away With Murder (2014): Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding lead actress in a drama series • Fences (2016): Academy Award for best supporting actress
Viola Davis Finds a Powerful Voice
The Oscar-winning actress has a new movie and a whole lot of confidence
John Russo/Contour by Getty Images "I am au naturel,” proclaims actress Viola Davis as she pops up on my computer screen for our Zoom chat. She is indeed sporting a plain white robe, a brown turban and no makeup, no adornments. "I feel it is my duty as a human citizen to not put out perfectionist images,” she says. “I'm putting out a realistic image. And if that doesn't please people, so be it.” Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine. It's a sharp departure for a woman who once considered herself to be invisible, and did all she could to be seen as someone other than herself. Davis, the second youngest of six children, was raised in tiny Central Falls, Rhode Island, where her dad, Dan, worked as a horse groomer and her mother, Mae Alice, was a maid and occasional factory worker. The family lived in a partially condemned apartment building; their homelife, says Davis, was stained by alcoholism and violence at the hands of her father. , she was ostracized not only because she was a dark-skinned Black girl in what was then a predominantly white community, but because her appearance and hygiene betrayed her dire poverty. To be seen, she says, she excelled in school and college, and eventually attended the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City, where her journey as an actress began—and in recent years has taken off. Appearing in films like The Help, Doubt and , and on the TV hit How to Get Away with Murder, she has already collected an Oscar, an Emmy and two Tonys — becoming the first African American woman to win what is considered the triple crown of acting. She stars in the Netflix film , premiering Nov. 25, and next year she will appear in at least two other big-screen projects. Alongside her husband, — married 17 years, they have a 10-year-old daughter, Genesis — Davis recently landed an expanded film and television production deal with Amazon.And in a year many would describe as one of the most difficult in modern times — , national economic decline, racial tension and political divisiveness fueled by a — Davis, who has more than 10 million followers on her social media accounts, has emerged as a powerful voice not only on the modern-day American Black experience but also on the suffering and poverty that transect racial lines. Of course she could have gotten made up for her interview today. But for Davis, 55, offering herself plainly is a hard-won achievement, as is the self-confidence she has built, bit by bit, that allows her to expose herself so freely. You can hear that confidence in her voice — not simply deep and melodic but full of intention — both when she is deadly serious and when she is busting out in joyous laughter. It is the voice of someone at the top of her game, and someone who once, at the very beginning, was at the bottom. If only for that reason, perhaps we should listen. Williams + Hirakawa/AUGUST
Q Do you remember the moment you realized you were somebody
Anne Lamott, the fabulous writer, says that someone or something would give her a leaf pad, and that leaf pad was enough to carry her to the next leaf pad, and then carry her to the next leaf pad. That's how she moved through her life, through her pain, through everything, until she got to a landing. And that's what it was for me.Q In what ways
It was just a gradual sense of going out there and doing things, and then realizing at 14 that I was pretty good at acting. My drama teacher looked me in the face and said, “Viola, if you can really get this, develop a technique, you can actually make a life out of this. You're actually that good.” It's those little seeds that give you an inkling of who you could become. God moments. And it's the people who loved me, people who poured into me. Let me tell you something, when someone loves you, and sees more in you than you see in yourself, you cannot put a price on that. That was every single one of my teachers in high school, in the Upward Bound program, in Summer in the City. Those were my leaf pads.Q Your mom Mae Alice also helped give you voice and ambition
, nutrition classes. That's all we were allowed to do. My mom said, “Y'all are going to be at those classes every Tuesday through Friday night after school.”Q You ve said you and your older sister Deloris used to dream of bigger things that we were like hunters — even if we didn t really have any interest we would do it just to get out Where did that drive come from
Well, necessity is the mother of invention. While there were a lot of moments of joy in the house, there was a lot of alcoholism and violence, too. So we had a sense of tragedy and deprivation, along with poverty. What comes with poverty is invisibility. Nobody talks about the poor. We just wanted to be somebody, desperately. And that's what happened. Flowers & Gifts 25% off sitewide and 30% off select items See more Flowers & Gifts offers > You negotiate your worth. You're saying you're more than what your financial situation is. You're more than your square-mile city of Central Falls. You're more than your beautiful parents, who I love more than anything, even my dad. Not a specific dream necessarily, just the drive itself, because that's what gets you out of the bed in the morning. A feeling of, I'm important. Whether it was me and Deloris pretending to be two rich women in our tea-party games. Whether it was model legislature, Girls State, glee club, art club, drama club. Everything. It was throwing putty against the wall and seeing what stuck.Q Who has been your greatest acting inspiration
Ms. [Cicely] Tyson. She's everything. When I was a kid, I saw The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and Ms. Tyson looked like me. I saw a physical manifestation of a dream. After that, it was Jane Alexander, Meryl Streep, Rosalind Cash, Olivia Cole, Mary Alice. But the ball started with Ms. Tyson.Q It s been written that you languished on the margins of Hollywood before vaulting into the public consciousness in the last decade Do you remember the moment you felt you made it
I've never felt like I've languished. I was blessed to be a working actor, and that's what I've felt since my first real role. The unemployment rate in acting is 95 percent. If you are an actor and you have put in your 10 weeks onstage so that when that play is over you can go back to wherever you are and collect unemployment, you are in the 1 percent. Viola Davis in "Fences" (left) and in "How to Get Away With Murder." Paramount Pictures/Photofest; Mitchell Haaseth/Walt Disney Television via Getty Images via Getty ImagesViola s Greatest Hits
• King Hedley II (2001):• Doubt (2008): Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress • Fences (2010): Tony Award • The Help (2011): Academy Award nomination for best actress • How to Get Away With Murder (2014): Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding lead actress in a drama series • Fences (2016): Academy Award for best supporting actress