Truly, madly, intimately: Viola Davis breaks free from the tragic characters she is often corseted in.(Interview)(Biography)

PEOPLE KEEP INSISTING THAT VIOLA DAVIS must be strong. Partly it's the roles she often plays, and the performances she delivers--displays of gut-wrenching, bone-crushing emotions that might turn a lesser actor into a pile of smoking ash. It makes her shrug, this strength that others so readily attribute to her.

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She says, "You feel every day that you're all things and everything. Sometimes when people describe the kind of black woman I am--that's not me. I'm not always strong. I'm a little quirky at times, and sometimes I'm funny. Sometimes I am ...

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