Viola Davis, American actress
Viola Davis (born August 11, 1965) is an American actress and producer. The recipient of an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Tony Awards, she is the first African-American to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2012 and 2017. In 2017, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in 2020, The New York Times ranked her ninth on its list of the greatest actors of the 21st century.Born in St. Matthews, South Carolina, Davis began her career in Central Falls, Rhode Island, appearing in small theater 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 2008 drama Doubt, for which she received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Greater success came to Davis in the 2010s. She 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. In 2014, she began playing lawyer Annalise Keating in the television drama series How to Get Away with Murder, for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2015, becoming the first black actress to win the award. In 2016, she reprised the role of Rose Maxson in the film adaptation of Fences, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 2018, she starred in Steve McQueen's heist film Widows, for which she earned her second British Academy Film Award nomination for Best Actress in a Leading Role, her third nomination overall. In 2020, she garnered further acclaim for her performance as the titular character in the biographical drama Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, for which she received a fourth Academy Award nomination, becoming the most-nominated black actress in Academy Award 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 2019, she became a L'Oréal Paris ambassador.