Viola Davis is This Year’s Frontrunner for Best Actress (The Help)

Regardless of how you feel about 'The Help,' you gotta give it to Viola Davis for not being afraid to talk about race.

By Jorge Rivas Jan 05, 2012

Entertainment Weekly has Viola Davis (The Help) and George Clooney on their latest cover and they’re calling them the front-runners for Best Actor and Best Actress at the Oscars this year.

And let me tell you. I may not be a big fan of ‘The Help’ but I am certainly rooting for Viola Davis because the woman is not afraid to talk about race in Hollywood.

Here’s what she had to say about race to the most mainstream entertainment magazine there is, Entertainment Weekly:

"Only one black actress in history has been back [at the Oscars] more than once, and that’s Whoopi Goldberg. But that’s only because there aren’t a lot of roles out there that are going to bring you back. Say if you have two great roles for an African-American actress in a year — one actress can cover it. So if there’s five really good black actresses out there, and that one actress gets it all, then the other four can sit for the next three years."

Below Davis discusses the role of black actresses in Hollywood, and how they’re often forced to overcompensate because of critiques from society, including criticism from African-Americans.