Viola Davis accepts the award for outstanding performance by a female actor in a drama series for How to Get Away with Murder on stage at the 21st annual Screen Actors Guild Awards at the Shrine Auditorium on Sunday, Jan. 25, 2015, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Vince Bucci/Invision/AP)
(People) – From her captivating colorful red carpet moments to her all-natural beauty remedies, Viola Davis is one of the most relatable actresses on our small screens every week. And now, the How To Get Away With Murder star is opening up about her sexuality in a recent interview, and we can’t help like her even more.
Years before landing the lead role as sexy, intense Annalise Keating in How To Get Away With Murder, Davis attended Julliard, where she felt she had to be something she wasn’t in order to land roles. “I always tried to be the 90-lb. white girl. Only because we did a lot of classical training and all of the ingénues in Shakespeare were very small women,” she told Essence. “So I tried to make myself small. Literally. I don’t know how I did that. I was like thinking, ‘Small. Light.’ I would try to have a higher voice, which sounds ridiculous, right? But I felt like there’s only one way to be sexy. It’s almost like I felt like I had to disappear.”
But now, the Screen Actors Guild award winner is thrilled to have the opportunity to embrace her sexuality on screen each week. “It feels really good to embrace exactly who I am and be my sexy or be my sexualized. To be my woman, you know?,” she said. “And it’s been the joy of my life. It really has and I think it found me at the right time of my life.”