Viola Davis, 61, Calls Shingles Her ‘Kryptonite’ and Shares 8 Healthy Aging Tips (Exclusive)

EGOT winner Viola Davis, 61, has enjoyed her share of public wins—whether earning an Oscar for the film adaptation of Fences or winning our hearts in the movie The Help. But now, she’s speaking up for the first time about a private health battle: her painful back-to-back bouts with shingles in her 50s, which she calls her “kryptonite.”

It’s just one of several health challenges—from low iron, to uterine fibroids and a partial hysterectomy—that Davis has faced behind the scenes. “It’s a privilege to age,” she tells Woman’s World in an exclusive interview. “The number one necessity is realizing you’re not 25 anymore.” Here, how Davis stays healthy in midlife and how she’s inspiring other women to do the same.

8 ways Viola Davis approaches healthy aging

Here’s how she prioritizes her health:

She protects her immunity to guard against shingles

“With shingles, I had a very unusual case of it because I had it more than once,” reveals Davis, in her rich voice, known for speaking radical honesty. “When it first appeared, it was a raised rash, blistering rash that started in my stomach, wrapped around my back and then sort of went away. Then it came back in my upper back.”

How did it feel? “I’m telling you, the nerve pain: nine out of 10—easy. It leveled me. No energy. It hurts even to put clothes on!” The impact on her life? She says, “You can’t get out of bed… So all these things that you feel like you want to do, that you’ve been called to do, you can’t do.” She adds, “It was my kryptonite.”

We know Davis is strong, like the role she played as a criminal defense attorney in the TV show How To Get Away With Murder. But getting shingles humbled her. She realized her immunity wasn’t what it used to be. Citing her past role as a warrior, she says, “It was like bam! It was my wake-up call that I wasn’t The Woman King.”

She’s her own best health champion

Shingles hit Davis at a time of busy excitement and reduced sleep. “I was running on stress. I had a five-year-old daughter who was extremely active. My career was taking off and I didn’t have time to feel what I deemed as weak.” She admits she didn’t go to a doctor right away. “I literally thought it was a spider bite.”

“I was a person that never wanted to bother anyone. That’s how I was raised,” she says. “Whatever pain you were in—emotionally, physically—you suck it up.” But she encourages women to know they are worthy of medical evaluations. “When you feel like you’re worth it, you demand it and so go to your doctor, demand the answers.” She adds. “You have a right to get angry. If they don’t give you the answers, you can fire them and get another doctor.”

She educates herself on health risks that rise with age

Davis always believed her destiny involved more than acting. Now as a health advocate, she’s partnered with biopharma company GSK for their “Shingles, actually” disease education campaign. One out of three people will get shingles—a painful viral infection from the Varicella-zoster virus, related to chickenpox—in their lifetime. Check out Davis’s hero video about the rising risk of shingles as we age.

Now, Davis shares, “I’m the town crier at the top of the mountain saying, ‘Listen, y’all, don’t go there.’” She wants people to learn their risks, talk to their doctors and prevent shingles. “I, unbeknownst to me, was not taking care of me. Even though I worked out, even though I ate right, I wasn’t arming myself with information.” Moving forward, she adds, “I go to the doctor whenever I feel something is not right. I redefined what it means to be a strong woman once I got shingles.”

She embraces the art of doing nothing

The relentless hustle has lost its appeal for Davis. “Stress is not cool,” she realized. “I know that’s our meeting place. We meet each other stressed out. We share our stressed out story. We try to outscore each other with our stressed out stories. And whoever can carry the stress the best, they win. But you don’t know what you win!”

Now as she ages, she sees things differently. “It is a requirement in healthy aging to feel at peace, to feel a sense that you can wake up in the morning and have a body that works for you.”

That realization “catapulted” Davis into experimenting with wellness routines that make her feel restored. Things like: “infrared saunas and meditation, being surrounded by people that you love and who love you, taking breaks.” She adds that she wears a heated mask at night and uses a vagus nerve stimulator tool. “I literally do that and it works.” But her best piece of advice is free: “Getting used to and embracing that beautiful, beautiful thing which is called doing nothing. I deserve it!”

She digs into her mental health

Davis opened up about being “extremely dedicated” to therapy to help untangle issues in her mind. “You have to be curious enough about what is going on with you when you are feeling stress and you are feeling anxiety, which is a big thing in my life. I suffer from anxiety.” She adds, “Or if you’re feeling even any level of depression, you have to be curious enough to understand what is behind it, and you have to be brave enough to go through whatever it is to try to get to the answers.” She promises there is a payoff for that curiosity. “Know that there is liberation at the end.”

She learns from what her mother didn’t teach her

“The first person who told me about how to age in a way that’s healthy was my mom—from what she did not do.” Davis explains, “She never prioritized herself, ever. She never thought that she was the love of her life. She never celebrated herself.”

The conversation turns tender when Davis adds, “I am my mother’s child. I am Mae Alice’s daughter, and the baton that she left me is: Be better than me. Be more than what I was.” It’s a bittersweet message about her 83-year-old mom. Davis reveals, “She’s in advanced dementia, but she’s still here, and I feel like that’s the sort of silent message that she’s given to me.”

She embraces the gifts of aging

Davis had a tough childhood, growing up in poverty in Rhode Island. But when asked what has surprised her most about midlife challenges, she says, “That I’m not young anymore, but I’m still fabulous!”

What does fabulous mean to Davis? “I feel absolutely more valuable.” She adds, “Listen, I’m over 50. It’s like I said, your immune system is not the same anymore. Certain things, they just don’t work the same way that they did when they’re 25. But what does work is wisdom. What does work is the appreciation of life, the gratitude and being at awe of it. What does work is being in awe of even a body that services you.”

She also values her feel-good relationships at this stage of life—like husband Julius Tennon, daughter Genesis and close friends Meryl Streep and Octavia Spencer. “Not only do you love people—the people that are in your life that you choose—but that they love you.” She says, “That is more of your warrior fuel than even how much money you have in the bank and how big your house is.”

She practices honest aging—‘I speak my truth’

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Davis’s goal as she ages: “To not betray myself. Speak my truth from the moment I put my feet on the floor in the morning. I reject anything that literally does not make me feel good. And the first indication that it’s wrong is how I feel about it, not how everyone in the room feels about it.”

She literally checks in with her gut to sense how she’s feeling, and that free act is worth all the therapy and saunas in the world. “When I feel like I’m true to that, there’s something that releases in me. It’s almost like a really good deep tissue massage.” She quips, “I feel like it’s the Glennon Doyle quote that your job in life is to disappoint as many people as you can to avoid disappointing yourself.”

Bottom line: “Your body is the greatest instrument that is going to carry you into healthy aging,” Davis says. So take care of it physically and mentally!