Viola Davis is enjoying the "freedom of being me" after turning 61.

The How To Get Away With Murder star celebrated her birthday in August, and explained in a new interview that she's adopted a new outlook on life as she's got older.

She told AARP The Magazine: "I think that when I was younger, I was so afraid of failure. I was so terrified that failure would define me. No it doesn't. It doesn't define me and it also does not challenge my worth. Who I am is really shaped by my family, my background.

"I wasn't an MTV girl. We didn't have cable TV because I was poor. We didn't have a telephone. What shaped me is, actually, sometimes, bad memories and bad experiences.

'Knowing that they were there, but they were not there to cripple me - they were there to challenge what I already had inside me."

Viola added that while she sees herself as "brave", her definition of the word is different from other people's

She explained: "When I say brave, is, I had the ability to survive the hard stuff. I can do the hard stuff. It doesn't matter if people think that I'm beautiful.

"It doesn't matter if people feel like Viola, at 61, you can't do an action movie, you can't do a love scene, you can't do A, B and C. My ability to overcome and to challenge and to believe in my ability is mine."

Viola went on to say that while some people think that you "disappear" in Hollywood as you get older, she has experienced the exact opposite.

She said: "When you come to Hollywood, I think women over 40, then over 50, you feel like you've just sort of disappeared and fallen off a cliff. So it's nice to know that's not true.

"I feel like my value is going up. It feels fabulous. I don't see my age as a limitation or anything. I feel like right now at this point in my life I actually have the freedom of being me.

"Mistakes, dreams, successes, all of it is mine to define, and I think that that's the award and the reward as I'm ageing, is a discovery of that."