Viola Davis "never imagined" she would become a world-famous actress

She told USA Today: "I have to say that this is the first award that I was told that I had won that made me cry. Little Viola showed up, who just never could imagine that she could evolve into this life or this career so I just feel incredibly grateful today which is a rare emotion for me."

The 'First Lady' actress also admitted that she always knew she had the tenacity to "survive" tough things in life and that to this day that sort of attitude would serve her as a mantra.

She added: "I always was gonna survive. So if I were gonna say any mantra [it would be] 'I'm gonna survive this' , whatever obstacle is in front of me, I'm gonna survive."

In 2023, Viola claimed EGOT status as one of 18 people to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony throughout their careers but admitted at the time that in the early days she had to learn to "embrace" her true self in pursuit of success.

She told People: "You always feel like you're hustling for your worth, as a woman, and as a black woman. After a while when you get beaten down so many times, there is something that happens that you have a God divine moment [of] seeing yourself and who you actually want to be. And you make a choice: You want to live, you want hope, you want to be that sort of ideal self, or are you going to embrace the person that you don't want to be? And I chose to embrace the hopeful Viola, the Viola that was a survivor. It just happened, but it came through a lot of bruises."