Viola Davis

Acting · 4.2 popularity

Age

Movies

Born: August 11, 1965
From: St. Matthews, South Carolina, USA
Website: Visit site

Biography

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.

Works

83 films

Black Adam

20226.8

The Suicide Squad

20217.5

Kung Fu Panda 4

20247.0

Ocean's Eleven

20017.5

Prisoners

20138.1

The Help

20118.2

Suicide Squad

20165.9

Air

20237.3

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

20237.0

Law Abiding Citizen

20097.4

The Unforgivable

20217.4

Ender's Game

20136.6

Knight and Day

20106.2

The Woman King

20227.6

Eat Pray Love

20106.2

Traffic

20007.1

Children of Blood and Bone

2027

Widows

20186.5

State of Play

20096.8

Blackhat

20155.5

Disturbia

20076.7

Kate & Leopold

20016.4

Get Rich or Die Tryin'

20056.8

Out of Sight

19986.7

G20

20256.3

Doubt

20087.2

Fences

20166.9

Beautiful Creatures

20136.0

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her

20146.6

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

20117.0

The Pentagon Wars

19986.9

Get On Up

20146.8

Solaris

20025.9

Trust

20106.5

It's Kind of a Funny Story

20106.9

World Trade Center

20066.1

Syriana

20056.4

Nights in Rodanthe

20086.3

Stone Cold

20056.8

Far from Heaven

20027.1

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

20206.6

Jesse Stone: Death in Paradise

20066.9

Jesse Stone: Night Passage

20066.9

Troop Zero

20197.0

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them

20146.2

Madea Goes to Jail

20096.5

Lila & Eve

20156.1

Jesse Stone: Sea Change

20077.0

Custody

20166.9

Antwone Fisher

20026.9

Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds

20177.5

Love, Marilyn

20136.6

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him

20146.7

On Broadway

20198.7

Beyond All Boundaries

20096.8

Won't Back Down

20126.1

The Architect

20065.6

Beyond Boundaries: The Harvey Weinstein Scandal

20185.4

Dark Girls

20116.8

The Shrink Is In

20014.9

The Best of The Tony Awards: The Plays

2006

The Substance of Fire

19966.4

Live in Front of a Studio Audience: "All in the Family" and "Good Times"

20196.1

W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With a Cause

20266.0

Small Great Things

2026

Miss Apprehension and Squirt

1998

Grace & Glorie

19986.3

Amy & Isabelle

20015.6

Life Is Not a Fairytale: The Fantasia Barrino Story

20066.2

Oprah + Viola: A Netflix Special Event

20226.4

Predator or Prey: Making The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

20247.5

Doubt: Stage to Screen

20096.5

Giving Voice

20206.4

August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand

2015

Operation Othello

2019

The Personal History of Rachel DuPree

2026

Ally Clark

2026

I Almost Forgot About You

2026

House of Games

2026

The Ebony Canal: A Story of Black Infant Mortality

20251.0

Two Butterflies

2026

Food 2050

202210.0

A Touch of Sugar

2019