Viola Davis Shares Photo of the Former Plantation Where She Was Born

Photo credit: Rachel Murray - Getty Images
Photo credit: Rachel Murray - Getty Images

From House Beautiful

Today is Viola Davis's 55th birthday, and in celebration of the event, the actor is sharing a look at her roots. "The above is the house where I was born August 11, 1965," the actor captioned a post shared on Instagram today. "It is the birthplace of my story. Today on my 55th year of life....I own it....all of it."


Though Davis didn't literally buy the property, her spotlighting it shares an important look into her past: In a 2015 interview with Glamour, Davis reflected on the part of her childhood spent at the home, located in St. Matthews, South Carolina, which belonged to her grandparents. The actor spent her early childhood there with her five siblings in extreme poverty—an experience that led her to become an active advocate for ending childhood hunger. The building is part a property that was once a slave plantation.

Davis but underscored the importance of the home's role in her life by including the words to a Cherokee birth blessing in her caption: "May you live long enough to know why you were born."

A previous version of this story erroneously claimed Davis had purchased the home in the picture. She has not.

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