In the issue Viola talks her early acting ambitions:
“Even back when I was 11, I knew that Isabel Sanford from The Jeffersons came from the stage. I never watched the Oscars, but I watched the Tonys every year. I wanted to be onstage. I wanted to be like Colleen Dewhurst or Jane Alexander—one of those great ladies of the theater, doing Ibsen and Shakespeare.”
She also talks making a name for herself in Hollywood:
“You can be in the business for 23 years, which I have been, and suddenly something happens that wakes people up. For me, that was being in a movie with Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Philip Seymour Hoffman,”Davis says of Doubt. “It makes people realize you’re there. Otherwise you’re that black girl who had a guest or costar role in a TV show here or there.”
Her new film Won’t Back Down releases September 28.