Viola Davis Achieves EGOT Status at the GRAMMYs

Viola Davis has become the 18th person in history to achieve the EGOT status.

The this year's GRAMMYs, Davis took home the award for Best Audiobook, Narration, and Storytelling for Finding Me.

Davis has won two Tony Awards for King Hedley II in 2001 and then for Fences in 2010. She won an Emmy Award for How to Get Away With Murder and an Oscar for reprising her stage role in the film adaptation of Fences.

Previous EGOT winners include: Mel Brooks, John Gielgud, Whoopi Goldberg, Marvin Hamlisch, Helen Hayes, Audrey Hepburn, Jennifer Hudson, John Legend, Robert Lopez, Alan Menken, Rita Moreno, Mike Nichols, Tim Rice, Richard Rodgers, Scott Rudin, Jonathan Tunick, and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Viola Davis is a critically revered actress of film, television, and theater and has won rave reviews for her multitude of substantial and intriguingly diverse roles. Audiences across the United States and internationally have admired her for her work- including her celebrated, Oscar-nominated performances in The Help (2011), Doubt (2008), and her Oscar winning performance in Fences (2016).

In 2015, Davis won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series for her work in ABC's How To Get Away With Murder, making her the first black woman in history to take home the award. In addition to acting, Viola currently produces alongside her husband and producing partner, Julius Tennon, through their JuVee Productions banner. Together they have produced award-garnering productions across theater, television, and film.

In the 2010s, Davis won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance as Rose Maxson in the Broadway revival of August Wilson's play Fences. For starring as a 1960s housemaid in the comedy-drama The Help (2011), she won a Screen Actors Guild Award and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

From 2014 to 2020, she played lawyer Annalise Keating in the television drama series How to Get Away with Murder, for which she became the first black actress to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2015. In 2016, she reprised the role of Maxson in the film adaptation of Fences, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

In 2016, she made her debut as Amanda Waller in the DC Extended Universe film Suicide Squad and has reprised the role in subsequent DCEU media. In 2020, she portrayed Ma Rainey in the biopic Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, for which she received a fourth Academy Award nomination, becoming the most-nominated black actress in Oscar history.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride / WM Photos