Fighting FORCE

Actress, author and businesswoman Viola Davis has lived through abject poverty and abuse to become one of her generation's most celebrated artists. She fought through the fear of what her life could have been to create one that others aspire to

- MEGAN PAULSE

Viola Davis. Just hearing her name is likely to give you flashbacks to scenes of the hit legal thriller series How To Get Away With Murder, or any one of her many acclaimed roles. The 2014 series took the world by storm and made the actress a household name. Unbeknownst to many though, the series came nearly two decades after she got her first acting gig. Yes, she is the epitome of the saying ‘It takes years to become an overnight success’. And her years were not easy…

‘My entire life has been a protest,’ she said in an interview with Vanity Fair. The second youngest of six children, she and her family are no strangers to hardship. Born on a plantation farm in South Carolina in 1965, her parents, Dan and Mae Alice, moved to Rhode Island with her and two of her older siblings shortly after she was born so that her father, a horse groomer, could find better work. Sadly, the move did not result in a life of fairy tales and roses. Dan was an alcoholic who often abused his wife. On more than one occasion, a young Viola would come home from school to find traces of blood on the floor of their home, which rarely had hot water, heat, gas, a working toilet or a bar of soap. Her mother often endured beatings at night while she and her sisters were in bed with bed sheets wrapped around their necks so that they would not be bitten by the rats that had infested their home. Hearing the beatings resulted in her wetting the bed, something that would continue into her teenage years. She found no solace at school either. While some teachers belittled and humiliated her for her poor hygiene, others simply ignored her. Nobody, she says, ever considered investigating the cause of the problem. She never felt worthy.