Finding Me

by Viola Davis

“Vee! Don’t worry about that shit. Just put a Speedo on your head.” “Julius . . . really? A Speedo? You want me to be baptized in a Speedo?” “Vee. God ain’t looking at your Speedo! He just wants your heart.”

I changed my life and Julius was the reward, my peace was the reward.

By this time, there were fourteen people living in an eight-hundred-square-foot space.

“What do you want in your next husband?” asked Rose. And Dorothy says, “I want someone to grow old with.”

I saw it with my mom when she had to sit next to Daddy’s deathbed. That’s marriage. That’s love. That’s commitment.

You have to validate that. You keep their lips moist and give them little sips of water if they can take it. Most importantly, the number one comfort is this . . . hold their hand.

The purpose of life is to live it. The purpose of life is to live it.

There’s no word to describe it. In between scenes, she’d share a chocolate with me. We ate a lot of chocolate.

“Let me tell you something, if I wake up and my uterus is still here, I’m going to kick your ass. Okay? Kick your motherfucking ass.”

As the surgical team went back and forth, he said he reminded them, “I’m telling you she is going to kick my ass!”

Stacey Snider, one of the producers from The Help, gave a beautiful shower for me at our home, where cutie pie Genesis just held court. Genesis was and is everything to me.

The Help was spectacular because we all had our own houses or apartments in Greenwood and we would visit one another.

Unfortunately, The Help is a movie our culture, our country was not ready for.

I was nominated for an Oscar again in 2012, this time for best actress in The Help.

I had ten days of work as a friend/maid in Beautiful Creatures

I won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for How to Get Away with Murder in 2014,

I was forty-seven when I got How to Get Away with Murder.

There are 327 million people in this country and only blond, petite, white girls are sexual?

With How to Get Away with Murder, I became an artist in the truest sense of the word.

Denzel is that actor’s director.