Viola Davis was hungry. Not the kind of hunger that comes from skipping a meal, but the kind that made her search garbage dumpsters infested with worms for something to put in her mouth.
She grew up in Central Falls, Rhode Island, in a building that was falling apart, without hot water, with rats as housemates.
Her father groomed horses, her mother worked cleaning other people’s homes, and she went to school on an empty stomach almost every day.
She told the story herself in 2014, during Variety magazine’s Power of Women luncheon. She did not say it to elicit pity. She said it because she wanted people to know where she had come from.
Today Viola Davis is the only African American actress in history to achieve the EGOT: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony.
She studied at Rhode Island College and then at Juilliard, one of the most demanding acting schools in the world.
She now devotes part of her time to the Hunger Is campaign against childhood hunger, because she knows exactly what it feels like not to know what you are going to eat tomorrow.