Viola Davis

Viola Davis, born August 11, 1965, on her grandmother's farm in St. Matthews, South Carolina, and raised in grinding poverty in Central Falls, Rhode Island, is the first Black woman to achieve the EGOT — Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards — and one of the most transcendent actresses in American entertainment history. Her early childhood was defined by extreme hardship: her family lived in a rat-infested tenement without heat or running water, and she has spoken with unflinching candor about hunger being a constant companion throughout her formative years. Acting was her escape, language, and ultimately her salvation. She pursued it with religious discipline, earning a scholarship to Rhode Island College and then training at the Juilliard School, graduating in 1993 alongside Macaulay Culkin and Laura Linney. Her early career was built on the New York stage, where she won her first Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for August Wilson's King Hedley II (2001). She won a second Tony for Fences (2010), opposite Denzel Washington, in a production of devastating emotional power. Her brief but catastrophically effective appearance in Doubt (2008), opposite Meryl Streep — a role of only about eight minutes of screen time — earned her a first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, widely regarded as one of the most impactful single-scene performances in modern film. She made history as the first Black actress to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for How to Get Away with Murder (2015). She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020), playing the blues legend with leonine authority. Her memoir Finding Me (2022) became a New York Times bestseller. She is one of the most important voices in Hollywood today on representation, equity, and the dignity of the Black creative experience.