Viola Davis doesn't need any help.
She is a lock for a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her film "The Help."
At age 46, the acting tornado doesn't lament that it took this long to get to this point. She celebrates the fact that she's representing women in midlife who dare to soar.
"I worry about aging much less than other actresses," says Davis who took home a Critics Choice Award last night for Best Actress, beating out even her former costar Meryl Streep who gave Davis a standing ovation after her win.
"I see myself as a mentor to so many gifted women of color who are right behind me coming up. It's my job to succeed and then pass the baton to them.
"That doesn't mean I'm out of the game as I grow older," she cautions. "I do know with age you have to define yourself differently.
"Maybe I won't be the star or the headliner, but someone who is a producer or a mentor or a creator of a show. I want to give others the opportunity to fly.
"I think age affords you the wisdom to know that you can create real change," she says.
Ask her what she knows now that she didn't know at 20 and the warm, friendly Davis just laughs.
"Everything!" she cries. "What I really know is that as a person you have to rise above your own individual needs and desires to look at the large scope.
"The larger scope for me is redefining what people of color are," she says. "I want to do that in Hollywood. I want to say that we can do exactly what Caucasian actors do which includes love stories and period dramas and sci fi epics.
"I want to see actresses of color from 18 to 70 on the big screen. I want to see every size of woman because every type and size is beautiful," she says. "I just want so much."
"I've found this clarity after turning 40," she says. "It's like God planted these new ideas in me."
DAVIS RECALLS FILMING "THE HELP"
In the film now out on video – and certain to be a Best Film Oscar contender — Davis plays Aibileen Clark, a maid who discusses pride, prejudice and race relations with a young southern belle (Emma Stone) who wants to be a journalist.
Aibileen is a case study of the times. Her life revolves around hours of backbreaking work where she is a virtual surrogate mother to white children, although she had little time to raise her own son.
For her troubles, she's paid next to nothing, eats at a separate table and must use a specially crafted bathroom. She didn't dare go near the family powder room.
"This went on 50 years ago. It goes back to 1965. We're talking 350 years of the policies of racism, slavery, Jim Crow laws and segregation," Davis says.
"You can't outdo in 50 years what it took 350 years to create," she says. "That's the sad part. That's the tragedy.
"And it wasn't so long ago," Davis says of the times portrayed in the film that also stars Bryce Dallas Howard, Jessica Chastain, Allison Janney and Sissy Spacek.
"This film asks: How do you live a life and how do you gain respect for yourself when everyone around you is telling you that you're less – and when the culture is telling you that you're nothing?" she says.
"A huge generation of African American women went to their graves without ever uttering a word about their real hopes and aspirations. Nobody ever asked them, 'What do you want to do with your life? What are your dreams?'"
"No one invested in their potential," she says. "It was just understood that they would live the lives of their grandmothers and mothers. That seems so foreign to us now – a generation where everyone wants to make his or her mark. Our mothers gave us that baton to dream big."
DAVIS LOOKS TOWARDS HER FUTURE
Davis was nominated for an Oscar for 2008's "Doubt." Many Hollywood insiders think she will not only walk away with a nomination this year, but with the win.
"I didn't know if I could be good," she says of her last nomination. "So, the Oscar nomination was overwhelming. It was like a nod saying that I was still on the right path.
"I felt it was a confirmation from God that literally I dared to dream the biggest dream, worked hard and pulled it off.
"How many people can say that in life?" she poses.
She stars in the new drama "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" directed by Stephen Daldry and starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock.
She will also star opposite Holly Hunter, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Rosie Perez in the upcoming "Steel Town" about women who start a charter school.
"I'm looking at Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren and thinking, 'Gosh, I'd love to have a role like what you just did."
There is still one problem.
"Nobody is doing those roles, but white people, which gets a bit frustrating," she says. "The truth is that everyone has limitations including Caucasian actresses over 40. But there is still much less work for women of color.
"When you're underrepresented, you can't complain or jump up and down. You can't go into somebody else's house and make the rules. You have to build your own house."
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