Finding Me - Viola Davis

I remember Viola Davis from her performances - first in 'Help' and then in 'Fences' and realised at first sight that you cannot miss her presence. Way more powerful than most, a burning intensity in her eyes and her soul. 

Viola takes us down the road - her difficult childhood as a black in a school where there were mostly white kids, being bullied, attacked everyday on her way home. And homes were rat infested, hungry, no water kind of places where they would not have water to wash clothes which meant that with a bed wetter like her, she would show up at school smelling of urine. Teachers he felt close to would avoid her, a series of disappointments. But that's still the easy part - the tough part was when her father would beat her mother with anything he could find - until she was bleeding and they would all worry for her life. Or the childhood abuse.

Somehow Viola and her sisters survived all this. One turning point that she mentions is when her sister tells her - do you want to live like this? if you do not want to live like this decide what you want and work your ass off for it. Those words hit home and Viola dreams of a life of fame and works for it. She however does not reveal any details of how she worked at her craft but obviously she worked really hard at it. If that was the first nudge the second came from her drama teacher who told her and her sister that they were beautiful and could do something with their lives. Then she went to college, lived with almost no money, found a college that could get her an agent and worked her way up. All the time supporting her parents and family to the extent she can.

She distinguishes between actors who want fame and those who want to be artists and gives out numbers saying that less than four percent make upward of 50000 USD a year. Tough life. She gets into theatre, gets into TV and then finally movies. Her role opposite Meryl Streep in 'Doubt' got her an Oscar nomination and an Oscar for 'Fences'. She got the Cecil B DeMille award for outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment.

No boyfriend until very late, then a failed affair with a self absorbed man and then her firend tells her - 'you deserve what you want. Go home and pray for exactly what you want on your knees' - and she does that. Prays for the perfect black man, sensitive, caring etc etc and she finds Julius almost immediately and marries him. She calls herself a great manifester and that shows in her life, She speaks about therapy and how it helped her overcome many of her demons about colour, her past, trauma, herself. As she accepts herself, finds herself, she grows into the woman she has become - 9th on the list of great actors listed by NYT, 100 most influential people in the world as per TIME.

The scene where she writes about her father - who she forgives and who becomes a completely changed man in his later years - and his death is very moving. As is the last scene where a friend asks her where it changed for her and she says there was this time when her father was beating his mother to pulp and she screams and screams until her older sister tells her to go inside. Viola goes into the bathroom and prays to god and tells him - remove me from her by the time I count ten and she counts ten. Nothing happens physically but Viola says - God took me into his arms then. That he did.

I only wish she wrote a bit about how she went about developing her craft. That she would read and write scenes and improve them comes across but her own insights would have been nice. Overall, a powerful reminder that we only have to 'decide' what we want and go for it with single minded focus.