‘IT IS MESSY’

Viola Davis: I Forgave My Dad for Beating My Mom After He Changed

“I wanted to love my dad.”

Viola Davis says her father regularly beat her mother while she was growing up, but the Oscar winner forgave him after he changed. “My mom said he apologized to her every single day. Every single day, he rubbed her feet. Forgiveness is not pretty,” the actress told People while promoting her new memoir, Finding Me. “Sometimes people don’t understand that life is not a Thursday-night lineup on ABC. It is messy. He did hurt me then, but love and forgiveness can operate on the same plane as anger.” She says she reconciled with her father, Dan, before he died of pancreatic cancer in 2006. “I wanted to love my dad,” she explained. “And here's the thing: My dad loved me. I saw it. I felt it. I received it, and I took it.”