Viola Davis Celebrates Turning 61: ‘My Value Is Going Up’

Viola Davis is 61, unapologetic, and convinced her best years are not behind her. Fresh off a birthday getaway to Mexico, the EGOT winner said that aging has only strengthened her sense of who she is—and what she brings to the table.

“My value is going up,” Davis said on TODAY with Jenna and Sheinelle. “I don’t see value as anything external, like beauty. Value is wisdom. Value is understanding your self-worth. Value is feeling comfortable in your skin.”

Davis marked the milestone by bringing a large group of friends to Mexico for a celebration complete with mariachi music. She said the entire trip was deliberately “unapologetic.”

“Every birthday from now on is unapologetic,” Davis declared.

For Davis, turning 61 feels less like becoming someone new than reclaiming the person she was before the world taught her to shrink herself. She called it “a return to myself”—specifically, her “brave,” “honest,” and “curious” self.

That lesson has also shaped how Davis raises her 16-year-old daughter, Genesis, whom she shares with her husband, Julius Tennon. Rather than treating teenage eye rolls and defiance as problems that automatically need correcting, Davis said she has begun recognizing the courage that can sit beneath them.

“The so-called bad girl is important because the bad girl is usually the brave girl,” Davis explained. “Usually the honest girl.”

Davis said her own efforts to be the “good girl” often stifled her voice and trained her to value other people’s opinions over her own. Her advice to Genesis is now direct: “Don’t betray yourself.”

That commitment to leaving the next generation with more than she had is also driving Davis’ work in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She and Tennon invested $1.2 million through their Davis-Tennon Foundation to establish the Mary Alice Davis Family Engagement Center, named in honor of Davis’ mother.

The center will expand a food pantry that already serves approximately 3,000 people each month. It will also offer housing and domestic violence assistance, after-school activities, educational workshops, workforce development, financial literacy programs, a parent resource center, and meeting space for local nonprofits.

The project brings Davis’ story back to where it began. Born in South Carolina, she moved to Central Falls as a baby and grew up in extreme poverty. In her 2022 memoir, Finding Me, Davis described living in a condemned, rat-infested building that sometimes lacked heat, electricity, gas, and functioning toilets. Her family relied on food stamps, which she wrote were “never enough to fully feed us.”

Central Falls also gave Davis some of her earliest lifelines. She has credited local teachers, mentors, and theater programs with recognizing her talent and showing her a larger future.

She later graduated from Rhode Island College in 1988, performed at Providence’s Trinity Repertory Company, and trained at Juilliard, where instructors pushed her to shed her heavy Rhode Island accent.

Now one of the few performers to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony, Davis is putting resources back into the community that helped launch her.

“Viola is not the only rock star in Central Falls,” she said. “I think there are a lot of heroes there. They only need support. That’s it.”

The center is particularly meaningful because Davis’ mother has advanced dementia. Davis said Mary Alice retained “so much love and grace to give” despite enduring tremendous hardship throughout her life.

“I say that I am Mary Alice’s daughter,” Davis said. “My thing is, I have to leave something behind. That’s what my life is about. It’s not about golden statues. It’s about what my life means for someone else.”