Salon.com > Viola Davis http://www.salon.com Tue, 21 May 2013 03:16:06 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Viola Davis on why her role in “Beautiful Creatures” changed from a maid to a librarian http://www.salon.com/2013/02/12/viola_davis_on_why_her_role_in_beautiful_creatures_changed_from_a_maid_to_a_librarian/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/12/viola_davis_on_why_her_role_in_beautiful_creatures_changed_from_a_maid_to_a_librarian/#comments Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13198978 Viola Davis, nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe for her role as a maid in the civil rights era-set movie "The Help," will most likely never play a maid again. She recently told CNN, "I'm tired of that," explaining, "Me and Octavia [Spencer], Aunjanue Ellis, Roslyn Ruff – we all played maids in 'The Help' and it was fabulous. It's a fabulous story because we were personalized and all of those things, but I think that people need to see an African-American in the 21st century integrated in the life of this town and family who's not in servitude."

Except that in "Beautiful Creatures," the book that Davis' next movie is based upon, her character Amma is, again, a maid. She told the Hollywood Reporter that "[Director] Richard LaGravenese forbade us from reading the book. He said, "Do not touch the book." (Naturally, Davis then got the book). "I read half of it and then I put it down because Amma is a maid, and I just said, 'OK, there’s nothing I can learn from this.' "

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/12/viola_davis_on_why_her_role_in_beautiful_creatures_changed_from_a_maid_to_a_librarian/feed/ 0 “Won’t Back Down”: Why do teachers’ unions hate America? http://www.salon.com/2012/09/26/wont_back_down_why_do_teachers_unions_hate_america/ http://www.salon.com/2012/09/26/wont_back_down_why_do_teachers_unions_hate_america/#comments Wed, 26 Sep 2012 11:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13021859 So teachers’ unions don’t care about kids. Oh, and luck is a foxy lady. This is what I took away from the inept and bizarre “Won’t Back Down,” a set of right-wing anti-union talking points disguised (with very limited success) as a mainstream motion-picture-type product. Someone needs to launch an investigation into what combination of crimes, dares, alcoholic binges and lapses in judgment got Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal into this movie. Neither of them seems likely to sympathize with its thinly veiled labor-bashing agenda and, way more to the point, I thought they had better taste. Maybe it was that actor-y thing where they saw potential in their characters – a feisty, working-class single mom for Gyllenhaal, a sober middle-class schoolteacher for Davis – liked the idea of working together and didn’t think too much about the big picture.

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