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Viola Davis

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.

Filmography

2027
Children of Blood and Bone

as Mama Agba

Movie
2025
G20

as President Danielle Sutton

Movie
2024
Kung Fu Panda 4

as The Chameleon (voice)

Movie
2023
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

as Dr. Volumnia Gaul

Movie
2023
Air

as Deloris Jordan

Movie
2022
The Woman King

as Nanisca

Movie
2021
The Suicide Squad

as Amanda Waller

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

as Florida Evans

Movie
2016
Suicide Squad

as Amanda Waller

Movie
2013
Prisoners

as Nancy Birch

Movie
2011
The Help

as Aibileen Clark

Movie
2010
Knight and Day

as CIA Director Isabel George

Movie
2009
Law Abiding Citizen

as Mayor April Henry

Movie
1998
Out of Sight

as Moselle

Movie