Viola Davis is one of the brightest stars in Hollywood after picking up first Oscar win, but it took her years to become the strong, confident woman who just became the most nominated black actress of all time.

“I was one of those people that everyone knew, but I didn’t have a lot of friends. I didn’t date or do any of that stuff. I was overweight and very, very shy,” the Fences star tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story.

Davis, who grew up in extreme poverty, adds that she was “definitely not a snazzy dresser” and “definitely didn’t wear makeup.” A self-described “geek,” Davis says she was “always looking for a way to express what was in me, my thoughts, and I found it through theater, so that was where I thrived.” If she did not have that outlet, Davis says, “I probably would have imploded.”

But expressing herself through theater did not improve her confidence overnight. “My confidence took time. It really did, to come into myself,” she says. “It took many years of getting knocked down and getting back up to finally say, ‘Okay, I think I’m pretty tough. I’ve got this.’???? ”

With support from federal programs including Upward Bound, which helps prepare low-income students for higher education, and teachers like her principal, Davis won a full scholarship to Rhode Island College. She earned a B.A. in theater in 1988 before being accepted into the Juilliard School in New York and got her first Tony Award nomination for Seven Guitars three years after graduating.

Despite all her success, it wasn’t until Davis reached Hollywood around 1999-2000 that she began to become “mindful” of her appearance — or as she puts it, “Just wanting to look like a better me.” That was “the first time I realized I had two teeth that were crooked,” she remembers. “No one ever mentioned it until I got here.”

With each stage of her career, Davis has found “another barrier and another dragon to slay” in the pursuit of being confident with herself. “At first, I just wanted to try really hard to make people see that I was pretty, that I wasn’t just the drug addict from Antoine Fisher, so it was about proving something to someone,” she explains.

“It wasn’t until the last year that I was like, ‘Okay, I’m done with that,’ ” she adds. “I just want to look like me, good me. I just want to be satisfied with how I look. With every year that passes, it’s another dragon.”

Source: people.com

Date Posted: Friday, March 3rd, 2017 , Total Page Views: 1849