Viola Davis first graced screens as a theater actress in the 2002 "King Hedley II" production.
She then debuted her acting career in the 2008 "Doubt." This earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Recently, Davis opened up about the trauma she had experienced over the years in her new memoir, "Finding Me."
She revealed that she and her parents suffered crippling poverty and they all lived from hand to mouth.
She also spoke of the physical abuse her mostly-drunken father inflicted on her mom, alongside the sexual abuse she and her sisters went through.
In Spite of all this, she counts it as all joy, adding that "all of those things happened to me, but I own it. And it's a part of who I am."
Davis confessed that she felt an enormous sense of "existential crisis" while writing the memoir.
She also spoke of how she chose to forgive her father despite years of watching her father inflict pain on her mom, Mae Alice.
At the end of the interview, she mentioned that she was grateful for all her experiences, stating that it had given her an "extraordinary sense of compassion."