Viola Davis on daughter wanting to become an actress: 'I don't want to choose that for her'

MAUI , Hawaii, June 20 (UPI) -- Viola Davis says her five-year-old daughter Genesis is already planning for a career in the entertainment industry.

"She says she wants to be an actress," Davis explained to E! News before being honored with a Navigator Award at the Maui Film Festival.

"[She says], 'I gotta live the words, I gotta breath the words, I gotta remember the words,' and I said, 'Yeah and you also gotta go to school and get out of this house and pay your own rent,'" Davis said, adding that acting is not something that she would force onto her child.

"I just think this is a terrific profession. The work is fantastic, but the lifestyle? Eh. I don't want to choose that for her at a young age."

The 50-year-old How to Get Away with Murder star said she also dreamed of becoming an actress when she was young.

"I hoped, I dreamed but I didn't know. I just felt like the dreaming and the hoping would be enough and I think for the most part it is. I think that's what makes you get up in the morning and keeps you working and keeps you excited and in it and passionate and I think it's the passion that carries you through life."

Davis will next be seen as government official Amanda Waller in the DC Comics villain-focused action film Suicide Squad alongside Will Smith (Deadshot), Margot Robbie (Harley Quinn) and Jared Leto (The Joker), whom Davis previously praised for helping to inspire her performance through the use of surprise gifts he gave to the cast on set.

"He gave some really horrific gifts. He had a henchman who would come into the rehearsal room, and the henchman came in with a dead pig and plopped it on the table, and then he walked out. And that was our introduction into Jared Leto," she said of the dead animal gifts.

"Now I'm terrified as a person thinking 'Is he crazy?' but the second part was 'Oh [expletive]! I got to have my stuff together.' You talk about commitment and then he sends Margot Robbie a black rat. It was still alive in a box. She screamed, and then she kept it," Davis continued.

Suicide Squad opens in theaters Aug. 5.