She has one now

Viola Davis has played roles without names for years. She was Mother in Hospital in “World Trade Center.” Policewoman in “Kate and Leopold.” Social Worker in “Traffic.” She at least got a first name, Eva May, in “Antwone Fisher,” but that was all.

Though she was in only one scene and barely spoke a word, her portrayal of a broken woman in that film was transcendent, garnering her a Film Independent Spirit Award nomination.

Davis has long worked in television and theater in meatier roles with full names, winning a Tony Award for her work in August Wilson’s “King Hedley II.” Now, in film, she has moved up to a last name as Mrs. Miller in “Doubt,” a woman who must choose between two unbearable outcomes for her young son.

The film, which writer-director John Patrick Shanley adapted from his play, is a battle of wills between Meryl Streep, as Sister Aloysius, and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Father Flynn, with Mrs. Miller and her son caught between them.

In one pivotal scene, Davis burns up the screen in her intense exchange with Streep. Surely a two-name film role is soon to be in the offing.

Surprised by all the attention she has been getting for the part, Davis recently sat down over lunch to discuss her craft and how it is she does so much with so little screen time.

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How do you prepare for an intense scene like this, when you have only 10 or 15 minutes to get this entire character and her dilemma across to the audience?

You have to understand that the scene doesn’t just start when you start speaking. You’ve already had a whole life that you’ve lived before you walked into the scene, so you prepare it the same way that you would if you had a character as big as Sister Aloysius. You rely on background, history, you use your imagination and you do all the active theater-geek lingo of finding the need. You rely on your craft, on finding out what drives the character, the objectives, the targets, what obstacles are in her way. And then what you do when you start the scene is, you leave yourself alone. You don’t think in terms of ‘she has 10 minutes,’ or however long the scene is, you think in terms of just coming in, and listening and talking, and then relying on the foundations that you’ve laid as an actor to just carry the scene. That’s it. No more, no less.

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What was it like being directed by Shanley, who’s primarily a playwright and theater director?

We rehearsed for three weeks, which is unheard of in film. And we rehearsed it like a play. There was a period of discovery, asking questions, problem-solving and getting on your feet and choreographing it, and that served you really well. By the time you got to the set you felt like you were prepared because these are long scenes. A lot of words, a lot of verbal exchanges, a lot of complicated characters, so it made you more confident once you finally got there, you felt like you had uncovered something, and you weren’t flying by the seat of your pants, the way you usually do in TV and film.

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What’s it usually like in TV and film?

Ninety-nine percent of the time you get no rehearsal. And a huge amount of the time, you don’t get a human being that you’re playing. You get an idea, you’re serving a function. Which is fine, it really is. Not every role can be great. You’re very fortunate if you can pick and choose. You’re in the upper .005 percentile. So yeah, this is a rarity; it was a gift for me. People may say she has a little bit of screen time but she makes up for it in content.

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Have you been surprised by the critical response?

I’m shocked at the extent that people are moved. I’m shocked that they noticed me. You’re always shocked when people notice you. You want them to, you intend for it to happen, but you never think you’re going to do it, right? There’s a part of me that feels like not being able to do it keeps me in it. Keeps me working to do it. So that’s probably why I imagined that I wouldn’t reach people. That they would kind of like me and think I did a pretty good job, and then it would keep me in it, working for the next role to just blow people away. So now, it’s kind of making me a little nervous. Are they setting me up for failure? Is everything else going to be compared to this and have I reached my pinnacle? All actors feel that way, that they’re going to be found out.

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