A low, deep voice, modulated to convince, a smile at nine hundred megawatts.
If energy and dignity had a face, it would be Viola Davis.
At 56, the star of
The Color of Feelings, Murder
and
Fences
is much more than a multi-award-winning actress (the first black American actress crowned at the Emmy Awards in particular, in 2014).
A passionaria of the black and feminist cause, working constantly for Hollywood to make its post-MeToo and post-Black Lives Matter transformation by opening up to parity and diversity.
A true icon – even if she hates this word –, who currently plays Michelle Obama in The First Lady (available on Showtime since April 17 in the United States), a miniseries she produced for JuVee Productions, her company set up with Julius Tennon, her husband of twenty years and father of her eleven-year-old adopted daughter, Genesis.
Finally, an inspiring woman who will receive the prestigious Women in Motion Award 2022 at the Cannes Film Festival on May 22,
created by the Kering group, which has been very involved since 2015 in its mission to promote the work of female directors and actresses.
A prize reserved for emblematic pioneers, such as Jane Fonda, Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, Isabelle Huppert or Patty Jenkins.
To discover
To listen > our Scandals podcast "Tom Cruise: the mysteries of a life between Hollywood and Scientology"
Listen to our Scandals podcast "Tom Cruise: the mysteries of a life between Hollywood and Scientology"
A best-selling autobiography
In the light of his autobiography,
Finding Me
(which has just been published in the United States by HarperOne, not yet translated), the rise of Viola Davis to the highest spheres seems vertiginous, almost a miracle.
The first African-American star to have won the “triple crown of acting”, as they say across the Atlantic – namely a Tony Award (theater), an Emmy Award (television) and an Oscar (cinema) – is born in the only room of her grandparents' house on a former plantation in South Carolina, where her ancestors were slaves.
His mother is the eldest of a family of eighteen children, brought up by poor tenant farmers.
A childhood paved with tragedies and discrimination.
When she was 14, her mother became pregnant.
She will have five other children with Viola's father, an alcoholic man who cheats on her and hits her.
A trauma whose
actress struggles to come undone, even after hours spent with a psychotherapist.
"There will never be enough pages to describe the fights, the waking up in the night, or when I came home from school and prayed that my father would not kill my mother", writes Viola Davis in this autobiography dignified, very far from the confessions of certain stars.
Full screen
Viola Davis has just published her autobiography, Finding Me, immediately ranked at the top of the New York Times bestsellers.
Dia Dipasupil / AFP
Poverty and discrimination
The word “poor” (poor, editor’s
note
), she explains, is still too measured to describe the catastrophic situation in which the family of six children finds itself, which then moves to Central Falls, a small town located in the state of Rhode Island.
Viola Davis prefers to say “po”.
The building they moved into is unsanitary and crawling with rats.
The meager income of his mother, who is good, and his father, a racetrack groom, are not enough to meet their needs, nor are the food stamps, which run out in two weeks.
She is hungry, steals from the shops to eat, she is cold, because, by dint of unpaid bills, they have been cut off from electricity and gas.
"I sacrificed my childhood for food, and I grew up in immense shame," she says.
They never got the phone, if
dress in charity thrift stores.
The future superstar – very shy, introverted, she describes herself – narrowly escapes one of the frequent fires that ravage her building, and will later reveal to her mother (this is one of the unpublished information from her autobiography) that her brother sexually assaulted her.
And raped or assaulted his sisters.
"I'm the little eight-year-old girl running every day to escape the boys in my class who hate me because I'm ugly and black.
»
Viola Davis
At school, if she takes pleasure in learning, her daily life is just as tragic.
One day, on a set, Will Smith confided to him that he was still that same "fifteen-year-old teenager who had been dumped by his girlfriend".
“And you, who are you?” asked the actor.
“And here I am, she says, me the actress who works and has roles in the theater, multiple awards and a reputation for excellence and professionalism, answering her: “I am the little girl of eight years running every day to escape the boys in my class who hate me for being ugly and black.”
»
Full screen
Viola Davis and husband Julius Tennon at the premiere of
The First Lady
on April 14, 2022 in Los Angeles.
Series where she plays Michelle Obama, which they co-produced with their company JuVee Productions.
MARIO ANZUONI / REUTERS
The power of a resilient fighter
"My life is like a war movie," she says again.
In the center of this despairing picture, yet a clearing.
A remark from one of his older sisters, Dianne: "If you don't want to be poor all your life, you have to decide what you want to become."
Viola Davis will be an actress, like Cicely Tyson, the African-American actress playing in
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
, a historical fiction about slavery from 1974 and the first TV movie she saw on television.
A crazy ambition encouraged by a first feat of arms of the four Davis sisters.
While a group of white children trained in acting classes are given favorites in an comedy competition, the girls, who wrote their own skits and rehearsed for days like professionals, win the competition hands down , and even got a standing ovation.
The promise, already, of a profession, which she will conquer with a hard fight.
The theater became her refuge, she specialized at the University of Rhode Island, before graduating from the prestigious Juilliard School in 1993.
For years, then, she will face in the castings a multitude of rejections.
“When you are a black woman, actress or not, you are made invisible by society, which denies everything you are, which does not recognize your strength, your weaknesses, or your femininity.
We often build ourselves alone in the face of adversity, she confided to
Madame Figaro
.
That's probably where our power comes from: what we're going to find in our guts to fight.
And that's also what makes me proud to be a black woman.
The more the journey is strewn with pitfalls, the more you look within yourself for the tools to survive and make yourself heard.
Star committed to civil rights and women
By landing the role of Vera in the play
Seven Guitars
in 1996, the one that America nicknames with affection and respect "the other Meryl Streep" for her incredible range of emotions manages to change the situation and reverse the course of destiny. .
A destiny that as a committed woman she persists in wanting to change for others as well.
“With our production company, my husband and I want to decompartmentalize genres, honor black artists too.
We produced
The Woman King
, a film by Gina Prince-Bythewood about a tribe of female warriors in 19th century Benin (on US screens September 16).
I always dreamed of playing in a
Braveheart
black and feminine, to put some beatings on the screen.
I want to pay tribute to the little girl that I was: a badass!
