Viola Davis

Viola Davis is an American actress and producer. The recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Tony Awards, she is the only African-American to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting. She is also tied for the most film wins for an actress at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and with six overall wins, she is the most awarded African-American. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2012 and 2017, and in 2020, The New York Times ranked her ninth on its list of the greatest actors of the 21st century. Davis began her career in Central Falls, Rhode Island, appearing in small stage productions. After graduating from the Juilliard School in 1993, she won an Obie Award in 1999 for her performance as Ruby McCollum in Everybody's Ruby. She played minor roles in several films and television series in the late 1990s and early 2000s, before earning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her role as Tonya in the 2001 Broadway production of August Wilson's King Hedley II. Her film breakthrough came with her role as a troubled mother in the drama Doubt (2008), for which she received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. In the 2010s, Davis won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance as Rose Maxson in the Broadway revival of August Wilson's play Fences. For starring as a 1960s housemaid in the comedy-drama The Help (2011), she won a Screen Actors Guild Award and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. From 2014 to 2020, she played lawyer Annalise Keating in the television drama series How to Get Away with Murder, for which she became the first black actress to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2015. In 2016, she reprised the role of Maxson in the film adaptation of Fences, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 2016, she made her debut as Amanda Waller in the DC Extended Universe film Suicide Squad and has reprised the role in subsequent DCEU media. In 2020, she portrayed Ma Rainey in the biopic Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, for which she received a fourth Academy Award nomination, becoming the most-nominated black actress in Oscar history. Davis and her husband, Julius Tennon, are founders of a production company, JuVee Productions. Davis is also widely recognized for her advocacy and support of human rights and equal rights for women and women of color. In 2017, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in 2019, she became a L'Oréal Paris ambassador. She released her memoir, Finding Me (2022), which earned her a Grammy Award for Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording nomination for its accompanying audiobook.