Viola Davis

• Date of birth: August 11, 1965
• Place of birth: St. Matthews, South Carolina

Actor

An esteemed character actor who has performed regularly on stage, on television, and in films, Davis has won two Tony Awards, an Emmy Award, an Academy Award (or, Oscar), and a Grammy Award. In so doing, she became only the eighteenth actor in history to win a so-called EGOT (those four major, competitive American performance awards) and the third Black woman to ever accomplish that feat.

Early Life

Viola Davis was born on August 11, 1965, on her grandmother’s farm in St. Matthews, South Carolina. While Davis was still an infant, the family relocated to Central Falls, Rhode Island, where Davis’s father, Dan, worked as a horse groomer at racetracks, including Narragansett and Lincoln Downs. The Davises were one of the first African American families to live in Central Falls, and Davis recalls racism during her early life. She and her sister Diana went to films as their main form of entertainment to escape from their everyday lives, and Davis began to consider an acting career.

Davis began an extensive training process at the age of fifteen when she was offered a scholarship to attend the Young People’s School for the Performing Arts in Seekonk, Massachusetts. She then enrolled at Rhode Island College, where she graduated with a theater degree in 1988. The young actor then relocated to New York City, where she enrolled at the Juilliard School to continue her professional preparation. Davis remained at the prestigious school throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, while she gradually broke into various New York acting circles.

Life’s Work

Davis’s professional career solidified in 1996, when she made her Broadway debut as Vera in August Wilson’s play Seven Guitars (1995). For this role, Davis was nominated for a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award, and her performance won the 1996 Theater World Award. In the same year, the actor appeared in a feature film, The Substance of Fire (1996), and two network television programs, NYPD Blue and New York Undercover.

Through the rest of the 1990s, Davis continued working in films, television, and theatrical productions. Steven Soderbergh hired her to play Roselle in his 1998 film Out of Sight, alongside George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, and Davis appeared in the made-for-television films The Pentagon Wars and Grace and Glory, both in 1998. On stage, Davis appeared in God’s Heart (1997) at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center and in an Off-Broadway production titled Everybody’s Ruby (1999).

From May to July 2001, Davis returned to Broadway and starred in another Wilson play, King Hedley II (1999), opposite Brian Stokes Mitchell. For her role, Davis received the 2001 Tony Award for best featured actress in a play and the 2001 Drama Desk Award for outstanding featured actress in a play.

Throughout the ensuing decade, Davis capitalized on her Tony Award and Drama Desk victories, working tirelessly in the film and television sectors, accepting supporting and guest character roles. On film, Davis appeared in Traffic (2000), once again directed by Soderbergh; Kate and Leopold (2001); Far from Heaven (2002); Antwone Fisher (2002), for which Davis was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award; Solaris (2002), her third collaboration with Soderbergh; Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (2005); World Trade Center (2006); Disturbia (2007); and Nights in Rodanthe (2008). Concurrently on television, Davis made appearances in City of Angels (2000), Providence (2001), The Guardian (2001), Third Watch (2001), Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2002), CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2002), The Practice (2003), Century City (2004), Without a Trace (2006), Traveler (2007), and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2003–8).

Davis’s career took another significant step forward in 2008 when she was nominated for both the Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for her portrayal of Mrs. Miller in John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt. Acting alongside Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams, Davis earned the nominations for only eleven minutes of on-screen time, powerfully portraying a parent whose son might have been abused by a priest. While Davis had created a considerable body of work before her Academy Award nomination, her work in Doubt brought her the widespread recognition that had been largely absent from her under-the-radar reputation as a character actor.

After her career boost, Davis appeared in more television programs, including Brothers and Sisters (2008) and The United States of Tara (2010), and in additional feature films, including Madea Goes to Jail (2009), State of Play (2009), Law Abiding Citizen (2009), Knight and Day (2010), Eat Pray Love (2010), Trust (2010), and It’s Kind of a Funny Story (2010). In 2010, Davis returned to Broadway to star opposite Denzel Washington in Wilson’s Fences. Davis received her second Tony Award for best featured actress in a play for this performance. In 2011, she starred in the comedy-drama film The Help, a film adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's 2009 novel of the same name, for which Davis was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actress. She later expressed regret at having participated in The Help, which many have criticized for its "White savior" narrative and which Davis felt catered to White audiences instead of presenting Black lives honestly and fully.

In 2012, Time magazine included Davis on its annual list of the one hundred most influential people in the world. Davis continued to pick up numerous film roles throughout the early 2010s, appearing in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011), Won't Back Down (2012), Beautiful Creatures (2013), Ender's Game (2013), Prisoners (2013), and Get On Up (2014).

From 2014 to 2019, Davis starred as Annalise Keating, a defense attorney and law professor, in the ABC series How to Get Away with Murder, produced by Peter Nowalk. For this role, Davis won the Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding lead actress in a drama series in 2015 and two Screen Actor Guild (SAG) Awards for outstanding performances in a drama series in 2015 and 2016. She was nominated two more Emmys for that part, in 2016 and 2019.

In 2016, Davis performed in the superhero action film Suicide Squad. Also in 2016, she appeared in the film adaptation of Fences, reprising her role as Rose Maxson and again performing opposite Denzel Washington. For this performance, she won the Academy Award, Critics' Choice Award, SAG Award, and Golden Globe Award for best supporting actress.

Davis went on to costar in the well-received crime film Widows (2018) and headline the musical biopic Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020). For the latter performance, she won a sixth SAG Award, an Icon Award, and two NAACP Image Awards. She was also nominated for best-actress Oscar and Golden Globe Awards. That season she amassed the most Oscar nominations of any Black female actors to date and became the first Black female actor to win two best-actress SAG Awards. The following year Davis narrated a Hollywood Bowl production of Peter and the Wolf, was named the Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ Woman of the Year 2021, and announced the publication of her memoir, Finding Me (2022). Upon its release, the memoir was chosen as a selection for the esteemed Oprah's Book Club, and Davis recorded an audiobook version as well.

In 2022, Davis starred as former First Lady Michelle Obama in the Showtime series The First Lady. She also played the role of Nanisca in the epic The Woman King, based on historic events in eighteenth-century Africa. In early 2023, Davis received a Grammy Award for best audiobook, narration, and storytelling recording for the Finding Me audiobook, which led her to join the small group of performers who have gained EGOT status—winning all four Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards.

Davis and actor Julius Tennon were married in 2003; Tennon had two children from a previous relationship, whom Davis adopted. The couple adopted a daughter, Genesis, in 2011. David and Tennon founded Juvee Productions, a multimedia production company based in Los Angeles, in 2011. Davis serves as chief executive officer of JuVee and has starred in the company's productions Lila & Eve (2015), Custody (2016), and Troop Zero (2019).

Significance

Davis has performed in widely varied roles on both stage and screen. Her ability to combine strength and vulnerability in her performances has yielded honest and true-to-life representations of the complexities of everyday life. Davis’s body of award-winning work exemplifies this wide range.

Bibliography

Alexander, Jared. “Viola Davis Makes History with SAG Award Win for ‘Ma Rainey.’” TheGrio, 5 Apr. 2021, thegrio.com/2021/04/04/viola-davis-sag-award-win. Accessed 20 July 2021.‌

Bowman, Emma. "Viola Davis Achieves EGOT Status with Grammy Win." NPR, 5 Feb. 2023, www.npr.org/2023/02/05/1154671624/viola-davis-egot-grammys. Accessed 27 Mar. 2023.

Davis, Viola, Meryl Streep, and John Patrick Shanley. “The Nun vs. the Priest.” Newsweek, 8 Dec. 2008, pp. 64–66.

Lahr, John. “Viola Davis's Call to Adventure.” The New Yorker, 19 Dec. 2016, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/12/19/viola-davis-call-to-adventure. Accessed 27 Mar. 2017.

Renner, Pamela. “Truly, Madly, Intimately.” American Theatre, Sept. 2004.

Teachout, Terry. “Cheers for Viola Davis—and August Wilson.” The Wall Street Journal, 30 Apr. 2010, p. W5.

“Viola Davis.” Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, www.hollywoodbowl.com/musicdb/artists/1381/viola-davis. Accessed 20 July 2021.‌

Wallace, Amy. “Viola Davis as You've Never Seen Her Before: Leading Lady!” The New York Times Magazine, 12 Sept. 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/magazine/viola-davis.html. Accessed 27 Mar. 2017.