Age: 60
female
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.
Her family was reportedly quite wealthy and her father, a racehorse breeder and prominent gambler, traveled extensively with Lottie, teaching her the secrets of winning at cards at some of the finest casinos. After her father's death in the Civil War, Lottie's mother sent her to Detroit to find a husband. She was accompanied by Mary Poindexter, her loyal slave and nanny. After running out of money in Detroit, she fell into a life of gambling, traveling the Mississippi River. Lottie arrived in San Antonio in 1865. She became a house gambler at the University Club working for the Thurmond family. She met and fell in love with Frank Thurmond, a fellow gambler. After being accused of murder, Frank fled San Antonio and Lottie followed. The pair traveled for many years throughout the frontier areas of Texas, like Fort Concho, Jacksboro, San Angelo, Denison, Fort Worth, and Fort Griffin. They moved to Kingston, New Mexico, in 1877, where they ran a gambling room in the Victorio Hotel. Lottie later became the owner of the Broadway Restaurant in Silver City. In 1880, Lottie and Frank were married in Silver City. In 1882 they moved to Deming, New Mexico, where they settled permanently and gave up their gambling life. They became upstanding citizens in the community, with Frank eventually becoming vice president of Deming National Bank and Lottie helping to found St. Luke's Episcopal Church. Lottie died on February 9, 1934 and was buried in Deming.
