Viola Davis Quotes

I just think there's always room for humanity in acting, one can only hope, so when you bring in the whole life of a person that's playing a character, then surprises happen and are allowed to happen, and so it makes it more interesting.

As filmmakers and as actors, you have to find truth.

For a writer, they say write what you know. As a performer, you find it in yourself, in your heart. You relate to the character. You try to live it, try to have it be real for you.

Every time you get on a stage or in front of a camera, the whole exercise is about imagination. You're constantly depicting something that doesn't exist, and trying to find the reality of it. Once you settle on that premise, everything else is a matter of degrees.

Acting is the most communicative thing I can imagine doing.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances.

Definitely in voice-over, you have to be completely uninhibited. More than that, you have to put yourself back into the enjoyment of pretending.

Acting is like any other art form, in that you have the option to go very big or go very small.

Listen, acting is not surgery, it's entertainment. You're doing something to hopefully move people, to make them laugh, to transport them. But actors are vulnerable, and the reason we're vulnerable is that we're always trying to recreate human behaviour.

To me acting originally became an extension of game playing.

I guess just a lively imagination is the best effort an actor can have.

As an actor, the only thing you have is your instinct and your imagination.

For me, when I do my best acting, it's mainly imagination. Then I really have a lot of fun with it.

I think one of the great things about acting is the instant gratification: you just get up and start being a part of the story. The immediacy is something you get really addicted to.

There's something about getting onstage in a play where the actor tells the story, beginning, middle, and end, the way they want to tell it. For me, it's the most powerful place to be, and it's the most empowering place to be.

That's what I love about acting and love and drama and art: that humanness we all share.

My approach is always the same. I try to be as honest as possible. Find the real honesty and humanity in the character because even a fictional character is supposed to feel real. And my job is to find that reality and bring it to the screen.

When I write songs, I'm just writing stories, and being in musical theatre taught me how to act them out through singing.

I feel my job as an actor is to explore all sides of humanity.

For as long as I can remember, the thing that gave me a sense of wonderment and renewal... has always been the work of other actors.

Acting and singing are actually very similar because they're both telling a story.

I love acting and really taking on another person, another life.

The minute I start to talk about acting, I realize that I can't. You know, it's an abstract thing, a little bit mysterious even if you do it for a living.

I've always believed acting is an improvisational art form, even when not a single line is changed. I mean, the behavior should always be improvised. My favorite moments in any performance are when I'm just along for the ride; when I'm surprising myself. I know when I'm done and I think to myself, 'Gee, I didn't see that coming,' I've done well.

Actors are part of a certain percentage of people on this planet who have an emotional vocabulary as a primary experience. It's as if their life is experienced emotionally and then that is translated intellectually or conceptually into the performance.