Viola Davis Quotes

If I can look at each character that I am given and create them in a different way from the last role, I'm happy.

I love doing characters that surprise people and showing what I am, which is an actor, first and foremost.

The only thing I have tried to do is be a part of different films and bring out a different side of me as an actor every time I play a character. I would like to be known as a versatile actor.

I think your text [script] is everything; it's what informs you; it's what gives you the given circumstances. Then you take that and you add your own creativity and your own spin on things and you make it personal. That's what makes that character and that text unique to you, when you personalize it. I think that's where your job as an actor comes in.

I love the process of auditioning and having the chance to play a million different characters in one week - it's great.

I think in every character there are aspects of yourself that you bring to it. But then it would be really boring to just play yourself.

Every once in a while I go off to do a movie or a television series and I take my art with me. I can stay in character when I paint.

Everything, I think, about acting is based on imagination.

The secret of being a great actor is a love of food.

The imagination is part of the arsenal that actors draw from.

Yeah, I've always been accused of having a sense of mischief and I'm very flattered that you say you can see it in the roles I play, because I think that's important, even if I do play intense characters, like especially Christine Cagney.

You could say I'm a character actress. Or maybe a character actress who does peculiar, interesting lead roles.

I don't think, as an actress, you want to be beautiful. It's actually a disadvantage because that's not where all the interesting parts lie.

Acting is my first focus, but at the core, I'm a storyteller, and however that comes out is fine with me.

Good acting is all in the writing. If it isn't on the page, then it really won't make any difference. You cannot act on force of personality alone.

What I truly get excited about is not the genre of a movie or the size of a part - it's character. I like to find characters.

As somebody who has wanted to be an actor who is very young, I can relate to somebody who has been practicing oboe five days a week since they were very young. The physicality of anything a character does is a tremendous gift.

The good and wonderful thing about my whole career is that I've always felt that the audience, if I do it well, will track wherever I go, whether it's President or a lawyer or bad guy or good.

Acting is so exciting to me. It's a thrill; otherwise I wouldn't do it. Not to be hokey, but I think life is definitely worth living, whether you're working or not. For an actor, the character is the thing... it doesn't matter what medium you're in. as long as you have something to do.

That's what sets apart one actor from another, and that you can't teach. You can't give someone that. When you're working, putting a character together, or in a scene, that's where things will happen that you have to have the intuition to notice them, and to register them.

I think acting is a gift.

I don't have any dream role. I give my 100% to every character I play, and when the film clicks, it automatically becomes a dream role.

I love being an actor, especially in movies, because you get to be someone else.

I didn't ever think about being an actor. But I fell in love with it when I realized how amazing, difficult, and interesting it is.

Anyone who has been given the gift of being opposite an actor who gives and gives, it just makes you better.