Viola Davis is teaching her daughter about “commitment.”
The “How To Get Away With Murder” actress has made a point of instilling the virtue into eight-year-old Genesis, who she has with husband Julius Tennon, “every day” and making sure she learns how to live “with a greater goal.”
She explained to “Entertainment Tonight,” “Every day one of my biggest things with Genesis lately is about commitment. It’s about dedicating yourself to something even on days when you don’t feel like it.
“It’s understanding that you have to live your life with a greater goal in mind. If you want it, then you have to commit yourself to it.”
“Making people really understand commitment, especially at 8, is very, very difficult and that’s the biggest thing about today because I’m getting a leadership award.”
Davis opened up before she accepted the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award at the Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment 2018 Breakfast.
Her husband also revealed his own daily words to inspire Genesis, their daughter, who they adopted together in 2011.
He added: “I’m always telling her to guard her heart and to be the best she can be. Every day I tell her that – your heart belongs to you.”
Davis, 53, said to The Hollywood Reporter she has learned to accept herself as a woman in Hollywood and not feel a need to play a part in any meetings.
She explained, “Now, I don’t have to walk into the room like a dude, and have a pretend penis and sling it on the table and say, ‘I’m in the room now. You need to freaking listen to me.’
“I can come exactly how I am and I feel that my story, my understanding of people, my experiences, my vulnerability, my need to even embrace people, all of my feminine energy, is going to make me powerful.”
