In Variety Studio’s Actors on Actors, Academy Award Winner Viola Davis and Academy Award Winner Jennifer Lawerence had a touching conversation about acting and their lives. Viola Davis is 57 years old and African American. Jennifer Lawrence is 33 years old, blonde with blue eyes. Viola and Jennifer are amazing, powerful actors. Nothing but mad love and respect for each of them.
Viola studied at Julliard. She said the acting training there was highly technical. She got that it was also Eurocentric. Characters that she played or would play didn’t look like her. She said, “What I am I supposed to do with my blackness? What do I do with my deep voice and wide nose?”
Regarding the movie business, Viola said, “I feel like I don’t fit into the business. I don’t have anything that you can trade in. The youth, the beauty, all the things that you can use as sort of bait to come see my movie.”
Jennifer gently looked at Viola and said:
It’s interesting that you say that the business is the biggest hinderance and that you call yourself not beautiful. When I’m sitting next to somebody, who is… beautiful. Has a full mouth and strong jaw. Has beautiful eyes. Tall and toned, and you just came in. And you’ve just been told so many times that you’re not beautiful. And that you’re not what beauty is supposed to look like.
Like Viola, I cried.
Jennifer talked about her shame, her not being beautiful. “I’m very conscious of my intellect because I didn’t finish school. I dropped out of middle school.” Jennifer hates doing press tours for her movies because she fears that she comes off as inarticulate.
Viola said, “You’re very articulate.”
Jennifer said, “Thank you, and you’re beautiful.”
She continued, “I carry around my un-educational shame, and I have to stomach it, and then get teflon-ed. And say, ‘I know I’m not stupid.‘”
Later Viola eloquently clarified, “And listen, even when I talk about my beauty or whatever, I’m talking about it from an observational standpoint. I’m a dark skinned, 57-year-old woman… I’m good. But here’s the thing. Trauma is deep. I wish it weren’t. I wish I could sit here and say ‘I’m a badass, a boss bitch.’ I’m sorry, but that sneaks up on you.”
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Like Viola and Jennifer, I’m in therapy. I get it. My trauma of not being good enough as a little boy constantly sneaks up on me, too.
I’m not beautiful. I’m not handsome. I’m just not. I’m not what handsome is supposed to look like. I don’t look like Keanu Reeves. I don’t look like Hugh Jackman. I’m sorry. I just don’t. When I suffer over I’m not handsome, I let go of my fear that I’m not good enough. I practice that over, and over, and over again.
Since I was a little boy, I got that I would never be good enough for Dad. Whatever I did or didn’t do only made him so angry at me. I wasn’t the son that he wanted. I got that I was the biggest disappointment to him.
When I was 14 years old, I was the short, fat, ugly geek, who wasn’t good at any sports. There was no chance in hell that a pretty girl would ever look at me, much less like me. So, I cut my losses and concentrated on my studies. I dismissed any possible social life. I didn’t need any more disappointment. I got good grades in school. I got my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering. I moved to Los Angeles to work on satellites.
In graduate school, I started lifting weights and taking aerobics classes. I lost a lot of weight, got muscular, and looked a lot better. . . although, I was still 5’3”. In Los Angeles, I trained with the late Mizukami Sensei in Aikido for 25 years until he passed away. Sensei was a father to me. He taught me Aikido and what it is to be a good man.
Now, Ishibashi Sensei is my Sensei, my big brother. Sensei trains me to release my fear inside, my fear that I’m not good enough. I work on myself, not on others. That’s all I can do. I’m Godan (5th-degree black belt), because of Mizukami Sensei and Ishibashi Sensei. They have only my profound mad love and respect.
I work with my therapist Lance Miller to heal my childhood trauma and depression. I look at my fear that I’ll never be good enough, my fear I got from Dad when I was a little boy. I practice loving and forgiving myself.
That I’m not handsome, makes absolutely no difference in Satellite Systems Engineering, Aikido, or therapy. Yet from where I stand, not being handsome makes a difference in my journey to fall madly and deeply in love. In my experience with women and on Match dot com, a lot of women dismiss me because of the way I look. That’s just life. In some ways, not being handsome is a big deal. Does it have to be? Just asking.
In Actors on Actors, Viola asked, “If none of the things change that you don’t like about yourself, would you still be happy?”
In Aikido, Ishibashi Sensei said that I train to be quiet inside. I enter the attack and die with honor. If I defend, I can be defeated. The safest place to be is under the attack, in the danger. Every time I enter the attack, enter what I fear, I let go more of my fear inside that I’m not good enough. I free me. I can be happy amidst the danger, amidst the unhappiness. Quiet inside.
I have nothing to do with what goes on inside someone else. I have a say in what goes on inside me. There will always be someone who is better than I am, someone who’s more handsome than me. That’s just life. In the Japanese aesthetic wabi-sabi: There is beauty in our imperfection. I love myself for who I am and forgive myself for who I’m not. I’m quiet inside. I’m happy inside, too.
I’m not handsome. I can’t do anything about that. I work on myself, not on others. That’s all I can do. I try to be the best person that I can be, the greater man. I keep my heart open. My heart is true, magokoro. I’m open to the possibility of falling madly and deeply in love. Who knows? Lightening could strike. Just train. Just saying.
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Watch Variety’s “Actors on Actors” interview with Jennifer Lawrence and Viola Davis
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Photo by Seyedeh Hamideh Kazemi on Unsplash