Viola Davis is an American actress and producer who won the Best Supporting Actress category at the 2017 Oscars. For a black woman in Hollywood, the success she has achieved can sometimes seem unreal.
However, Viola Davis is as real as they come. After stealing countless hearts with her consistently captivating performances in various acting endeavors ranging from television to theater, she also manages to cement her place in those hearts with the profound speeches she coughs up at the slightest encouragement seems.
When she took to the stage on Sunday to accept winning Best Supporting Actress, the hall was already primed for a great speech, and Viola Davis couldn’t fail to deliver. After delivering a speech honoring the playwright whose play “Fences” was a film adaptation that gave serious rights to artists everywhere, Jimmy Kimmel joked, “Viola Davis just won an Emmy for that speech.”
Viola Davis Family, Father, Husband, Daughter
Born August 11, 1965 in South Carolina as the fifth child in a family of six, she was raised by her father, Dan Davis, a horse trainer, and her mother, Mary Alice, a maid. Her mother was also an activist and because of this, Viola was imprisoned with her mother at the age of two. She has a brother and four sisters.
Voila’s husband is Julius Tennon. The two married in 2003. Their daughter Genesis was adopted as a newborn. She is also the mother of Tennon’s two children, a son and a daughter, from a previous relationship.
Five reasons Viola Davis inspires women everywhere
She’s great at what she does
Viola Davis consistently gives the greatest performances as an actress. Whether as Annalize Keating on ABC ‘s Getting Away With Murder or Rose Maxson in Fences , both on stage and on screen, Viola Davis completely disappears as she brings characters to life.
She broke and set records
With her win at the 2017 Oscars, Viola Davis became the first African American to win an Emmy, a Tony, and an Oscar for performance. She is the 23rd actress to receive this award and she is the first African American actress to receive three Oscar nominations. When she won an Emmy for Lead Actress in a drama in 2015, she also became the first black woman to win in that Emmy category.
She gives the biggest speeches
In 2015, she won an Emmy for Lead Actress in Drama, delivering an emotional acceptance speech that established her as one of Hollywood’s leading voices for diversity. The following words at the beginning of her speech made this possible;
“I see a line in my mind. And above that line I see green fields and beautiful flowers and beautiful white women with their arms stretched out to me. But I can’t seem to get to how. I can’t seem to get past that limit.
“That was Harriet Tubman in the 19th century. And let me tell you something: the only thing that separates women of color from others is opportunity. “
“You can’t win an Emmy for roles that just aren’t there…”
In her acceptance speech as an Oscar winner in 2017, she also disappointed. She spoke again with great emotion, she said;
“You know, there’s one place where all the people of greatest potential have gathered, and that’s the graveyard.”
“People ask me all the time – what kind of stories do you want to tell, Viola? And I say exhume these bodies. Exhume those stories – the stories of people who dreamed big and never saw those dreams come true, people who fell in love and lost. “
“I became an artist and thank God I did,” she continued, “because we’re the only profession that celebrates what it means to have a life.”
She celebrates other creatives freely
At the 2017 Oscars, Viola Davis took time out in her acceptance speech to August Wilson, who wrote the play for the film Fences, and thanked her co-star and director Denzel Washington.
During that year’s Golden Globes ceremony, she paid tribute to Meryl Streep, who was her co-star in the movie Doubt.
“You make me proud to be an artist. You make me feel that what I have inside – my body, my face, my age – is enough.”
In her 2015 Emmy acceptance speech, she lavished praise on a host of other black actresses.
“And to the Taraji P. Hensons, the Kerry Washingtons, the Halle Berrys, the Nicole Beharies, the Meagan Goods, to Gabrielle Union: Thank you for getting us across this line.”
She loves her family
Giving her Oscar acceptance speech, Viola Davis thanked her family, starting with her parents. “The people who have taught me good or bad how to fail, how to love, how to keep a prize, how to lose: My parents, I am so thankful that God chose you to bring me into this world She also thanked her sisters, husband and daughter.
Viola Davis Net Worth
A very powerful actress who has been around for as long as many of us can’t remember the time when she wasn’t, Viola is one of the few actresses who can comfortably be said to have paid her dues in full.
With this in mind, it was established that the woman’s net worth is 12 million dollars. Since this isn’t bad, she, like many others, feels that considering everything she’s done, she should earn a much higher salary. This is mostly because many have put her close to Meryl Streep, who has a net worth of $90 million.
This is evident because she is paid less than the other actress and many others who perform less than her in the industry. To that end, the actress is now demanding that she be paid the same as others in her class, without sacrificing race or gender.
height
With an athletic build, here are the actress’ body measurements:
Height: 165cm
Weight: 59kg
Bra size: 94 cm
Dress size: 8 (US) or 10 (UK)
Shoe size: 9 (US) or 7 (UK)
Body measurements: 37-28-36 inches or 94-71-91.5 cm