Born: 11 August 1965, United States
Died: NA
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
Viola Davis is only the 18th artist to ever achieve the prestigious EGOT, having won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and a Tony. While the Tony came in her mid-30s, it was her later film and television roles that made her a household name across the United States. Born in 1965, she graduated from Julliard in 1994, making her Broadway debut in 1996. She earned her first Tony nomination for her performance in August Wilson’s Seven Guitars, and she made her film debut that year with a small part in The Substance of Fire, followed by other small roles in films like Out of Sight (1998), Traffic (2000), and Solaris (2002), as well as a recurring role as a nurse in the medical drama City of Angels (2000).
Arguably the definitive August Wilson actress of her generation, if not all time, Davis won her first Tony, for Best Actress (featured role, play), for her work in another Wilson play, King Hedley II in 2001. She would win her second in 2010 for her work as the female lead in Wilson’s Fences with Denzel Washington. The two would reprise their roles for a 2016 film adaptation of the play, directed by Washington. Winning both a Golden Globe and an Oscar, she became the first African American woman to win an Oscar, Emmy, and Tony for acting (Whoopi Goldberg and Jennifer Hudson had both achieved EGOT status before Davis, but for a combination of performance and producing).
Her performance in the dramatic film Doubt (2008), as the mother of a boy who may have been molested by a Catholic priest, earned her Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for best supporting actress. The 2010s, however, were a breakout period. Her performance in the 2011 film The Help earned her more Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, the same year she appeared in the 9/11 film Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. The television drama How to Get Away with Murder (2014-2020) was watched by millions, with Davis’s turn as the complex lead character earning her an Emmy in 2015.
Among her countless varied roles, Davis has appeared in science fiction projects like Ender’s Game (2013) and The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023), led super villains in comic book films Suicide Squad (2016) and The Suicide Squad (2021) and played real women like First Lady Michelle Obama (The First Lady, 2022), the leader of the so-called Dahomey Amazons (The Woman King, 2022), Michael Jordan’s mother (Air, 2023), and singer Ma Rainey (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, 2020), the latter of which won her another Oscar nomination and is adapted from another August Wilson play.
Davis completed her EGOT with her powerful 2022 memoir, the #1 New York Times bestseller Finding Me, winning the 2023 Grammy for Best audio book, narration, and storytelling recording for the memoir’s audiobook, which she narrated.
As she told The New York Times in 2014, “I see the kind of work that needs to be put out there in order to make change. Do I think there is a crisis for women over 40, too? Absolutely. But a 25-year-old white actress who is training at Yale or Juilliard or SUNY Purchase or N.Y.U. today can look at a dozen white actresses who are working over age 40 in terrific roles. You can’t say that for a lot of young black girls. That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing.”