TRIPLE THREAT

IT’S BEEN A TOUGH ROAD TO THE TOP FOR THE AWARDWINNING STAR

Don’t Fence Viola Davis in!

Standing proudly on the stage of Los Angeles’ Dolby Theatre, a large, heavy gold statue clutched in her hand and swathed in a haute couture gown, Viola

Davis was almost defiant.

Having finally won an Oscar for her heart-wrenching turn in Fences, after being nominated twice before, the actress poured her heart into her acceptance speech. After it went overtime by more than two minutes, she finally broke down.

“I became an artist and

thank God I did,” she said through her tears, “because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life.”

But the life the How to Get Away with Murder star is now living is a far cry from her background of poverty and desperation. And it’s not the shiny awards or big house the star, who is married to actor Julius Tennon (63) and mother to six-year-old daughter Genesis, is so excited about

– it’s food in the fridge and a roof over her head.

It’s been a rough road to the top for Viola (51), who is the only African-American to win an Oscar, Tony and Emmy award.

Born in her grandmother’s one-room shack on a former slave plantation in South Carolina, Viola was the fifth of six children. Her mother

Mary was a civil rights activist – at age two, Viola was taken to jail with her mum when she was arrested at a protest march – and her father Dan was an abusive alcoholic.

Life was tough for the impoverished family, who moved to Rhode Island in search of more opportunities when Viola was two months old. They suffered from extreme poverty.

“It was the kind of poor where I knew right away

I had less than everyone around me,” she recalls.

Living in vermin-infested apartments the city had condemned meant the family had to get creative to get by. She and her siblings tied rags around their necks at night to prevent the rats from biting, and Viola would go searching in rubbish bins for food.

“I would fall asleep at school on a daily basis because there was nothing. We had nothing.”

It was her wild imagination that proved to be Viola and her siblings’ saving grace. As she grew up, she realised acting was for her and she focused her energies on being the best she could be. She graduated high school with a full scholarship to Rhode Island College and was later accepted into Julliard – one of the most prestigious schools for the dramatic arts in the US.

A steady stream of jobs followed and she received a Tony award in 2001 for the play King Hedley II. But her “big break”, as it were, came in 2008 at the age of 40 when she starred alongside Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt, for which she received a slew of award nominations.

Next came her role in civil rights drama The Help, where she was nominated for her second Oscar, then her starring turn in the Shonda Rhimes TV series How to Get Away with Murder, which she believes was the tipping point.

Now, “everything has shifted”, and Viola is one of the most in-demand actresses in Hollywood.

“Sometimes I’m a little bit like a deer in the headlights,” she admits. “But then I remember it’s not my first time at the rodeo!”

With her career booming, Viola says her main concern now is raising Genesis, whom she and Julius adopted as a newborn in 2011. The couple want to make sure their little girl doesn’t grow up spoilt, though the doting mother did bend the rules a little when she took her to the Oscars gifting suite a couple of days before the ceremony!

However, Viola says they hold Genesis “accountable for everything” and often remind her how lucky she is to have a roof over her head. The approach seems to be working – Genesis admires her mum so much that for last Halloween, instead of the planned Wonder Woman costume, she decided to dress up as Viola Davis.

Of course, Genesis isn’t the only one filled with admiration for the Fences star – her former co-star Meryl Streep had these words to say about her friend and colleague –“Viola Davis is possessed of a blazing, incandescent talent. She is the most generous, present person I know. The thing Viola can’t do is be invisible. She just can’t do it. She can’t fade away, she can’t recede. She can’t be forgettable. Viola Davis is inevitable.”

‘ We are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life’