Viola Davis\u00a0(\/va\u026a\u02c8o\u028al\u0259\/\u00a0vy-OH-l\u0259; born August 11, 1965)\u00a0is an American actress and film producer.\u00a0Her accolades\u00a0include both the\u00a0Triple Crown of Acting\u00a0and\u00a0EGOT.\u00a0Time\u00a0named her one of the\u00a0100 most influential people in the world\u00a0in 2012 and 2017.\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0ranked her ninth on its list of the greatest actors of the 21st century (2020). Davis received the\u00a0Cecil B. DeMille Award\u00a0in 2025.<\/p>\n
A graduate of\u00a0Juilliard, Davis began her career in\u00a0Central Falls, Rhode Island, appearing in small stage productions. She made her\u00a0Broadway\u00a0debut in the\u00a0August Wilson\u00a0play\u00a0Seven Guitars\u00a0(1996) for which she earned her first Tony nomination. She would later win two\u00a0Tony Awards, both for Wilson plays. Her first win was for\u00a0Best Featured Actress in a Play\u00a0playing the titular character Tonya, a woman grappling with trauma and loss in\u00a0King Hedley II\u00a0(2001), followed by her second win for\u00a0Best Actress in a Play\u00a0playing Rose Maxson, a working class mother in\u00a0Fences\u00a0(2010).<\/p>\n
She won the\u00a0Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress\u00a0for reprising her role in the\u00a02016 film adaptation of\u00a0Fences. She was Oscar-nominated for playing a complex mother in\u00a0Doubt\u00a0(2008), a 1960s housemaid in\u00a0The Help\u00a0(2011) and\u00a0Ma Rainey\u00a0in\u00a0Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom\u00a0(2020). On television, she became the first black actress to win the\u00a0Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series\u00a0for her role as lawyer\u00a0Annalise Keating\u00a0in the\u00a0ABC\u00a0legal drama series\u00a0How to Get Away with Murder\u00a0(2014\u20132020).\u00a0Davis joined the\u00a0DCEU\u00a0playing\u00a0Amanda Waller\u00a0starting with\u00a0Suicide Squad\u00a0(2016). She has also starred in the crime drama\u00a0Widows(2018), and historical action film\u00a0The Woman King\u00a0(2022).<\/p>\n
Davis and her husband are founders of the production company JuVee Productions, and she is also widely recognized for her advocacy and support for\u00a0human rights\u00a0and\u00a0women of color. She became a\u00a0L’Or\u00e9al Paris\u00a0ambassador in 2019. The audiobook narration of her 2022 memoir\u00a0Finding Me\u00a0won her the\u00a0Grammy Award for Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording.<\/p>\n
Description above from the Wikipedia article Viola Davis, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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