
Acting
Community Rating
6.7
3 Ratist reviews
Born
August 11, 1965 (age 60)
Born in
St. Matthews, South Carolina, USA
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.

Children of Blood and Bone
Mama Agba
2027

G20
President Danielle Sutton
2025

The Ebony Canal: A Story of Black Infant Mortality
Narration
2025

Kung Fu Panda 4
The Chameleon (voice)
2024

Predator or Prey: Making The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
Self (Dr. Volumnia Gaul)
2024

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
Dr. Volumnia Gaul
2023

Air
Deloris Jordan
2023

Food 2050
Self - Narrator (voice)
2022

Black Adam
Amanda Waller (uncredited)
2022

The Woman King
Nanisca
2022

Oprah + Viola: A Netflix Special Event
Self
2022

The Unforgivable
Liz Ingram
2021

The Suicide Squad
Amanda Waller
2021

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Ma Rainey
2020

Giving Voice
Self
2020

Live in Front of a Studio Audience: "All in the Family" and "Good Times"
Florida Evans
2019

On Broadway
Self (archive footage)
2019

A Touch of Sugar
Narrator
2019

Troop Zero
Miss Rayleen
2019

Widows
Veronica Rawlings
2018