Viola Davis: I want to be the show

Viola Davis isn’t interested in being a wallflower.

The 48-year-old actress received an Academy Award nod for her work in 2011 historical drama The Help.

Viola is now starring in crime show How to Get Away with Murder and the thespian confesses she turned down film roles to be a part of programme.

“I have to say, and I will be bold enough to say, that I have gotten so many wonderful film roles, but I've gotten even more film roles where I haven't been the show. It's like I've been invited to a really fabulous party, only to hold up the wall," Viola explained to a crowd of reporters who erupted in laughter at the 2014 TCA Summer Press Tour.

How to Get Away with Murder centres on a brilliant law professor and her students. The group gets embroiled in a murder plot and must find a way out of the entanglement.

And Viola is exhilarated by playing such a sizzling persona.

"I wanted to be the show. I wanted to have a character that kind of took me out of my comfort zone. And that character happened to be in a Shonda Rhimes show in How to Get Away With Murder,” the star said.

“And so I did the only smart thing that any sensible actress would do, and I took it. I dove at it. And I love the fact that she's messy and mysterious and you don't know who she is. She's not necessarily nurturing and, 'Come sit on my lap so I can talk to you, baby.' She's not the kind of person that—doesn't need God, Jesus, or Buddha, because she knows all the answers. She's messy. She's a woman. She's sexual. She's vulnerable. And I think—I feel extremely fortunate that I am alive and still active and this role came to me at this point in my life.”