Viola Davis has admitted she was "a little judgmental" towards Chadwick Boseman on the set of his final film

She told The Times newspaper: "There was a part of me that was a little judgmental - why do you need all that? Little did I know that they were doing it because he was dying."

Viola grew up in "abject poverty and dysfunction" in Rhode Island and used acting as an outlet for fun, but then the "sense of torture" that comes with the profession slowly seeped in.

She said: "For me and my sister it was playing two wealthy white women who went out for tea in Beverly Hills with our chihuahuas. It was an imagination playground. Then, somewhere in there, pain entered into it.

"Training, speech, technique, critics - there's a sense of torture that you almost have to make peace with."

The 59-year-old actress and two of her six siblings moved to Rhode Island with their parents when she was around two years old, leaving the others with their grandparents, and despite the difficulty of her home life with a violent alcoholic father, Viola still "believed in herself", though she can see now how "damaged" she was.

She said: "Little Viola absolutely believed in herself in the midst of poverty. Even though I look back and go, 'Oh she was so damaged'...

"There is something deep within you that doesn't believe that you're worth it."

Viola has previously been critical of her Oscar-nominated role as maid in the 1960s in 'The Help', admitting she worried she had "betrayed" herself and her "people" because the film ultimately catered "to the white audience".

And she admitted she thinks now that critics didn't understand the choices she's had to make in her career.

She said: "[Many of them] don't understand the choices I had as a dark-skinned black actor with a wide nose and big lips. I don't fit the mould of what many people feel a star would look like.

"It's not like I have complete agency over how films are seen, but I get the brunt of it. I've done the best I could with what I've been given."