Viola Davis on Aging: ‘I Feel Like My Value Is Going Up’

Key takeaways

• Viola Davis says failure no longer defines her or challenges her worth.
• Her family history and difficult experiences helped build resilience and purpose.
• Viola Davis views aging as a time of freedom, confidence and growing value.

Summary

Viola Davis reflects on how aging has strengthened her sense of self-worth, resilience and personal freedom. She shares that fear of failure once shaped her outlook, but over time she learned that setbacks do not define her value. Drawing on memories of a challenging upbringing, she explains how difficult experiences became opportunities to discover inner strength rather than limitations.

Davis also discusses confidence, bravery and the ability to overcome obstacles regardless of age or public expectations. She rejects the idea that women become invisible as they grow older and instead says she feels her value increasing. For Davis, aging brings the freedom to define herself through her experiences, dreams, mistakes and successes.

The key takeaways and summary were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity.

Full transcript

[0:00:00] I think that when I was younger, I was so afraid of failure.

[0:00:04] I was so terrified that that failure would define me.

[0:00:07] No, it doesn’t.

[0:00:08] It doesn’t define me, and it also does not challenge my worth.

[0:00:18] Who I am is really shaped by my family, my background.

[0:00:23] I wasn’t an MTV girl.

[0:00:27] We didn’t have cable TV because I was poor.

[0:00:30] We didn’t have a telephone.

[0:00:32] What shaped me is actually sometimes bad memories, and bad experiences. Knowing that they were there, but they were not there to cripple me.

[0:00:38] They were there to challenge what I already had inside me.

[0:00:59] Here’s the thing.

[0:01:01] I see myself as brave.

[0:01:04] But when I say brave is I have the ability to survive the hard stuff.

[0:01:11] I can do the hard stuff.

[0:01:14] It doesn’t matter if people think that I’m beautiful.

[0:01:17] It doesn’t matter if people feel like, “Viola, at 61 you can’t do an

[0:01:23] action movie, you can’t do a love scene, you can’t do A, B, and C.”

[0:01:28] My ability to overcome and to challenge and to believe in my ability is mine.

[0:01:44] Every once in a while I’ll say, “I worked hard in my life.

[0:01:47] You know, I got some awards, you know, I did some great films” or whatever.

[0:01:51] And I always have to stop myself and say, “Viola, even without any

[0:01:55] of that, none of that didn’t have to happen, you’re still worthy.”

[0:02:07] When you come to Hollywood, I think women over 40, then over 50, feel like you’ve

[0:02:11] just sort of disappeared and fallen off a cliff, like you’re invisible.

[0:02:16] So it’s nice to know that that’s not true.

[0:02:19] I feel like my value is going up.

[0:02:22] It feels fabulous.

[0:02:26] I don’t see my age as a limitation for anything.

[0:02:30] I feel like right now at this point in my life, I actually

[0:02:34] have the freedom of being me.

[0:02:36] Mistakes, dreams, successes, all of it is mine to define, and I think that

[0:02:43] that’s the award, and the reward, as I’m aging, is the discovery of that.