Viola Davis

Acting

Born 1965-08-11 St. Matthews, South Carolina, USA 151 credits Academy Awards 1 Primetime Emmy Awards 1 Golden Globe Awards 1 BAFTA Awards 1 Grammy Awards 1 Tony Awards 2 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture 2 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play 1 star on Hollywood Walk of Fame 1 Audie Award for Narration by the Author or Authors 1

Awards

Won 1 Academy Award

Academy Awards 1 won · 3 nominated

2021 Best Actress Nominated Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
2017 Best Supporting Actress Won Fences
2012 Best Actress Nominated The Help
2009 Best Supporting Actress Nominated Doubt

Primetime Emmy Awards 1 won

2015 Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series Won How to Get Away with Murder

Golden Globe Awards 1 won · 1 nominated

2025 Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award Won
2023 Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama Nominated The Woman King

BAFTA Awards 1 won

2017 Best Actress in a Supporting Role Won Fences

Grammy Awards 1 won

— Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording Won

Tony Awards 2 won · 1 nominated

2010 Best Actress in a Play Won
2001 Best Featured Actress in a Play Won King Hedley II
1996 Best Featured Actress in a Play Nominated

NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture 2 won

2023 Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture Won The Woman King
2021 Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture Won Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play 1 won

— Outstanding Actress in a Play Won

star on Hollywood Walk of Fame 1 won

— star on Hollywood Walk of Fame Won

Audie Award for Narration by the Author or Authors 1 won

— Narration by the Author or Authors Won

Award data from Wikidata (CC0). Coverage may be incomplete.

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Viola Davis (/vaɪˈoʊlə/ vy-OH-lə; born August 11, 1965) is an American actress and film producer. Her accolades include both the Triple Crown of Acting and EGOT. Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2012 and 2017. The New York Times ranked her ninth on its list of the greatest actors of the 21st century (2020). Davis received the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2025. A graduate of Juilliard, Davis began her career in Central Falls, Rhode Island, appearing in small stage productions. She made her Broadway debut in the August Wilson play Seven Guitars (1996) for which she earned her first Tony nomination. She would later win two Tony Awards, both for Wilson plays. Her first win was for Best Featured Actress in a Play playing the titular character Tonya, a woman grappling with trauma and loss in King Hedley II (2001), followed by her second win for Best Actress in a Play playing Rose Maxson, a working class mother in Fences (2010). She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for reprising her role in the 2016 film adaptation of Fences. She was Oscar-nominated for playing a complex mother in Doubt (2008), a 1960s housemaid in The Help (2011) and Ma Rainey in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020). On television, she became the first black actress to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her role as lawyer Annalise Keating in the ABC legal drama series How to Get Away with Murder (2014–2020). Davis joined the DCEU playing Amanda Waller starting with Suicide Squad (2016). She has also starred in the crime drama Widows(2018), and historical action film The Woman King (2022). Davis and her husband are founders of the production company JuVee Productions, and she is also widely recognized for her advocacy and support for human rights and women of color. She became a L'Oréal Paris ambassador in 2019. The audiobook narration of her 2022 memoir Finding Me won her the Grammy Award for Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording. Description above from the Wikipedia article Viola Davis, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.