Country of Birth
USA
Industry
Entertainment
Top Achievements
Viola Davis is a highly influential American actress and producer. Renowned for her work across screen and stage, her accolades include both the Triple Crown of Acting and the EGOT.
Early Life and Education
Viola Davis was born on August 11, 1965, in St. Matthews, South Carolina. Soon after she was born, her parents moved to Central Falls, Rhode Island. Davis attended Central Falls High School where she quickly discovered a love of acting and began performing in school productions.
After high school, she enrolled at Rhode Island College, where she earned a degree in theatre in 1988. Davis continued her studies at the famed Juilliard School of Performing Arts in New York City, graduating in 1994 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Drama.
Early Career
Davis made her Broadway debut in 1996 in the original Broadway production of August Wilson’s Seven Guitars, a performance that earned her a Tony Award nomination. She also made her film debut in the same year, playing a nurse in the movie The Substance of Fire. In the years that followed, Davis acted off Broadway in various productions, and made a number of television guest appearances before returning to the Broadway stage in 2001 in another play by August Wilson, King Hedley II. For this performance she received her first Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.
Achievements in Her Field
Having established herself as a leading stage actress, Davis also continued her screen acting work. Her performance in Doubt (2008) earned her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations as well as the National Society of Film Critics Award for breakthrough performance, despite the fact that she appeared on screen for only eleven minutes in the film.
In 2010, Davis returned to Broadway in her third August Wilson play, Fences, for which she received her second Tony Award. In 2016, she reprised her role for the film adaptation of Fences, winning the Academy Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and BAFTA Awards for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.
In 2020, Davis took the title role in the biographical drama Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. She received a Screen Actors Guild Award in addition to her sixth Golden Globe nomination and her fourth Academy Award nomination, making her the most-nominated black actress in the history of the Oscars.
Recognition
Davis is one of the few performers to have won all four major American entertainment awards – Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony, otherwise known as EGOT. The New York Times ranked her ninth on its 2020 list of the greatest actors of the 21st century and Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2012 and 2017.
Additional Facts
- In 2012, Davis and her husband Julius Tennon founded their production company, JuVee Productions.
- Davis has spoken openly about the “abject poverty” in which she grew up. She is an ambassador for Hunger Is, a charitable initiative to eradicate childhood hunger across America.
- Davis’s memoir, Finding Me, was published in 2022.
