Viola Davis

Viola Davis is an American actress and film producer who has achieved the Triple Crown of Acting and EGOT status. Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2012 and 2017, and The New York Times ranked her ninth among the greatest actors of the 21st century in 2020. She received the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2025. Co-founder of JuVee Productions alongside her husband, Davis is also recognized for her advocacy for human rights and women of color, and became a L'Oréal Paris ambassador in 2019.

Davis was born on August 11, 1965, in St. Matthews, South Carolina, on the Singleton Plantation to Mae Alice Davis and Dan Davis. Soon after her birth, her family moved to Central Falls, Rhode Island, where she grew up in severe poverty. She developed an interest in acting at Central Falls High School and through federal TRIO programs. After earning a theater degree from Rhode Island College in 1988, she attended the Drama Division at the Juilliard School from 1989 to 1993.

Davis began her professional stage career in 1992 in an off-Broadway production of As You Like It. She made her Broadway debut in 1996 in August Wilson's Seven Guitars, receiving a Tony nomination. She earned her first Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for her performance in Wilson's King Hedley II in 2001. After appearing in various television shows and films such as Traffic, Solaris, and Far From Heaven, she won a second Tony Award in 2010 for playing Rose Maxson in a Broadway revival of Wilson's Fences.

Davis achieved a film breakthrough with her role in Doubt (2008), earning her first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She gained further recognition starring as housemaid Aibileen Clark in The Help (2011), winning two Screen Actors Guild Awards alongside Oscar, Golden Globe, and BAFTA nominations. Reprising her role as Rose Maxson in the 2016 film adaptation of Fences, Davis won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

On television, Davis played lawyer Annalise Keating in the ABC drama series How to Get Away with Murder from 2014 to 2020. Her performance made her the first Black actress to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. In film, she portrayed Amanda Waller in the DC Extended Universe starting with Suicide Squad (2016), and starred in films such as Widows (2018), Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020), and The Woman King (2022).

Davis received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the Harvard University Artist of the Year Award in 2017. In 2022, she released her memoir Finding Me, winning a Grammy Award for Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording for its audiobook narration.