Viola Davis Quotes

I read the 'Fargo' hashtag and what people tweeted at me and every article and every comment on every article. I really just ate it up. But I wasn't prepared for hearing what everybody thought of me.

I'm never the kind of person who's sitting at home reading the charts and basing how I feel about myself or even my career on stats. I've always based it on, 'Am I doing the best that I can do?'

I've always liked to watch myself onscreen because that's how I learn.

I am one of the people who just doesn't enjoy watching myself. I wish I could! I've seen 'Deadpool' three times; the third time, it was enjoyable for me.

Sometimes I struggle to watch stuff that I've done and sometimes I don't, and I'm sure that my judgment is based on whether I feel like I accomplished what I set out to accomplish.

It's spooky to look at yourself, because you are never quite what you think you are. And you are never as good looking as the person you are acting with, or something like that. So I learned to stay away from it because it was giving me more negative feelings than positive ones.

Normally I can't watch myself at all, and watching myself makes me cringe, and I cover my face, and it's very hard to watch.

A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world. Just as a flower, by virtue of its existence as a complete organism is both ornamental and self-sufficient as to color, form, and texture, so art, because of its singular existence is more than mere ornament.

It's hard to do, but I think it's really important to go back and watch yourself.

To have to watch myself in a way that was constructively critical was really good for me because it made me a little bit more easy on myself because I wasn't allowed to walk away screaming.

At the beginning of my TV and movie stuff, I would be really critical of myself, but I've gotten better and better. There's always little things that I think, "Oh, that could have been whatever," but most of the time I'm able to let go and watch like an audience member.

Human beings do not relate to written words in the same way that they will relate to spoken words. They do not relate to music in the same way that they do to pictures. It's all different parts of our head, different parts of our minds processing this.

It's always tricky to watch yourself, always. When I first had to watch myself, it was really hard because I'd done quite a few plays and I've never seen myself. So I was professional but I'd never watched myself. So I was like hearing you know... I'm sure you guys are all much more familiar with that because everybody has a phone, and everyone's taking pictures of themselves and making movies of themselves. And so people are more accustomed to it now. So I had to get used to it because there's a lot to be learned, of course, as an actor. When you watch yourself, you learn a lot.

So through identification you have pleasure and pain.

We have to be self-critical even in context that we might be critical of, even as we - our pieces appear in it.

When you go to the cinema you look up, when you watch television you look down.

I think as you mature as an actor things open up to you in a lot of ways, especially if you do work on yourself.

Comparative appraisals of efficacy require not only evaluation of one;s own performances but also knowledge of how others do, cognizance of nonability determinants of their performances, and some understanding that it is others, like oneself, who provide the most informative social criterion for comparison

It was so hard to watch myself back because whatever movie I do, I never look at the monitor. I hate looking at the monitor.

I have too many control issues, so it just is not good for me to go and watch a film, too soon after I make it.

Emotion operates, very often when you think about how you react to the world, you know, something is happening to you, you're simply going along and you're being confronted by different things, not necessarily very important or significance for your ultimate life, but you are constantly reacting to the world.

I am very critical! I hate watching myself but I know I have to because I'm going to be asked so I need to have some sort of semblance of what the films with me are like. But it's not an enjoyable experience watching yourself. I hate it less than I used to but I still don't enjoy it.

As far as looking at myself on screen, I tend to pick out every single flaw that I could have or should have done better. I'm more of a cringer at first and when it is years down the road and out of my way, I can actually appreciate it somehow.

Even in the most sophisticated person, it is the primitive eye that watches the film.

The only way that you can ever know if something is of value to you is by the way it feels as you are receiving it