ABC News(NEW YORK) — Two-time Oscar nominee Viola Davis now lives in a home in Granada Hills, California, but growing up in Rhode Island, the actress said she shared a rat-infested rent-free apartment with her five siblings. And on top of that, they were hungry.
“We had no food,” Davis told Glamour magazine.
“It was like, If you don’t eat it now, it’ll be gone, and you’re going to be hungry for the next — Lord, who knows how long,” she continued. “I was always so hungry and ashamed, I couldn’t tap into my potential. I couldn’t get at the business of being me.”
The How to Get Away With Murder star said she would often scheme to get food by befriending classmates, joining summer programs or even digging in dumpsters.
Davis said her rough upbringing started when she was born on a former slave plantation in St. Matthews, South Carolina, owned by her grandmother. Her mother and father only had a middle school education. Still, the family eventually saved up to move to Rhode Island.
“128 Washington Street was infested with rats,” Davis recalled of her new home. “When my sister and I have a nightmare, we say it was about 128.”
Davis took to acting at a very young age, and even won a skit contest at the age of 8. Still, when she won a plastic baseball bat as the contest’s prize, she took that bat, according to the magazine, to kill the rats in her home.
“Your ability to adapt to failure, and navigate your way out of it, absolutely 100 percent makes you who you are,” Davis told the magazine.
Davis is now using her celebrity to help children like her in a campaign titled Hunger Is, which aims to eradicate childhood hunger in the U.S.
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