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Viola Davis wins the Critics' Choice #SeeHer award and cements her place as my personal hero

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Viola Davis, star of How To Get Away With Murder and the person I want to be like when I grow up, recently took home the first ever #SeeHer award at the Critics' Choice Awards. The award honoured her for her work in furthering the portrayal of three-dimensional women onscreen, according to USA Today.

Viola, who gives a mean speech, opened with a joke saying: "It’s hard to accept being a role model for women when you’re trying to lose weight."

And while I can’t relate to winning an award for being this amazing (although I wouldn’t mind one, #justsaying), I do know what it’s like to be complimented on your work when you’re not feeling yourself at the moment. It makes you realise that maybe you’re a lot cooler than you think you are.

READ MORE: 15 damn good looks from the Critics' Choice Awards 2016 red carpet

The actress continued with: “I’ve always discovered the heart of my characters, I guess, by asking ‘Why?’ When I was handed Annalise Keating, I said, ‘She’s sexy, she’s mysterious; I’m used to playing women where you gotta gain 40 pounds and wear an apron. I gotta lose weight. I gotta learn how to walk like Kerry Washington in heels. I gotta lose my belly. And then I asked myself, ‘Well, why do I have to do all of that?’”

To which the crowd reacted with lots of applause.

Viola is expected to receive quite a few nominations for her role as Rose Maxson in Fences which is set in the 1950s and sees Viola as the impassioned wife to Denzel Washington’s character. So you’d think that someone this successful, beautiful, intelligent and strong would be so sure of herself, right? Well, she admits it took her a long time.

READ MORE on Channel24: All the winners at the 22nd Critics' Choice Awards

“I truly believe the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are, and I just recently embraced that at 51. I think my strongest power is that, at 10 every Thursday night, I want you to come into my world. I am not going to come into yours. You come into my world and you sit with me — my size, my hue, my age — and you sit, and you experience. I think that’s the only power I have as an artist, so I thank you for this award and I do see her, just like I see me.”

I didn’t think I could love this amazing woman any more than I already do, but then she went and did this.

Watch Viola’s full speech below:

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