When Davis was fourteen, she enrolled in an acting class through the federal program Upward Bound, which helps prepare low-income students for higher education. The class was run by a young actor and coach named Ron Stetson. “ ‘How many people in this class want to be an actor?’ ” Davis remembers Stetson saying. “We all raised our hands. He said, ‘You know you have to work fricking hard every fricking day.’ A fourth of the hands went down. ‘Every day.’ More hands down. ‘You can go on an audition every fricking day for six weeks and never, ever, get a job. You know that, right?’ More hands down. I remember thinking, Wow, that is awesome. My hand still was up. I was trying to reach the ceiling with my hand. ‘And you’re gonna get rejected time and time and time again.’ ” Davis continued, “Pretty soon, I was the only one who had my hand up. He kept going at me. ‘You’re gonna get egg on your face. You’re gonna fail.’ I kept my hand up, staring at him. He stared at me. ‘O.K., let’s get back to class.’ ”
“Whatever Viola got from me, she brought,” Stetson told me. “I just happened to be standing there when she was ready to give it.” Stetson’s class proved to Davis that her dream was bigger than her fear. Acting, and the emotional release it allowed, Davis said, “gave me great joy. Perfect joy. It wasn’t like I had to search for anything else.” When you’re acting, she explained, “you’re feeling everything—every last receptor in your body is alive, one-hundred-per-cent alive, and you’re not hiding anything, because everything is used as a tool to make the character a fully realized human being.” Davis enrolled at Stetson’s alma mater, Rhode Island College, where she was awarded a full scholarship. She graduated with a B.A. in 1988, and was one of two dozen actors chosen from a thousand applicants to the Juilliard School, in New York City.
Check out the New York Times full article of Ms. Davis’ Call to Adventure!