Quoted IV

This one is kind of lengthy, but it's so spot-on that I had to include it all. For real, this just makes me want to see Doubt all that much more:

"[With white actresses,] people see the possibilities. There are so many different types. You have the young 18/19-year-old types, the Amanda Bynes, or the early-20s, Hilary Duffs, the Lindsay Lohans, and the Miley Cyruses—teens. And then you get in the thirtysomethings, the Cameron Diazes, the Kate Winslets, the Reese Witherspoons, they’re all different! And then the older, the over-50, over-60, Helen Mirrens, Meryl Streeps, Diane Keatons, Sally Field. The fortysomethings, Nicole Kidmans, Julia Roberts, we can go on and on with this, and they’re all different. Some of them are quirky. You have the geek princess, you have the off-centered beauty, they don’t even have to walk in looking like Grace Kelly or Charlize Theron, they’re considered classically beautiful. They can be off-centered, their nose can be a little big, they can look ethnic, but there’s something in their eyes, or in the way they talk, that can make them kind of attractive. The girlfriend, the wife that the guy loves, but he sees the hot babe on the beach and decides to go with her, then ends up going back to his wife. The possibilities, the range.

I don’t see that with black women. And I very rarely see the over-50s, over-60s. Very few of those exist, even with Caucasian women, but they almost are nonexistent with us. And so that’s what I see. So if you don’t fit in the three categories that they have, then you don’t exist. You almost take all those qualities that you have, because you know they’re not going to see it, you almost try to cover them up. Because you know that if you show them, they’re going to be confused by that in an office, in an auditioning room. And at the end of the day, you try not to let it hurt your feelings, but it does. It hurts. And I’m hopeful that it will change, because I think that all of those women do exist. The woman who inspired me, Cicely Tyson, I saw as very beautiful. She was dark-skinned, she had full lips, she had high cheekbones, she was a fantastic actress. I saw it."

-Viola Davis

A.V. Club Interview