httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rriHv6_Ic0
Viola Davis is kicking off 2017 with a major milestone.
With her colleagues, agents, husband, and six-year-old daughter, Genesis, all in attendance, an emotional Davis dedicated her star to her late father.
Davis caught the acting bug at age eight, after watching Cicely Tyson in the 1974 TV movie The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.
After attending the famed Juilliard School of Performing Arts, in New York, Davis made her Broadway debut in 1996 and soon landed her first movie gig in The Substance of Fire with Sarah Jessica Parker and Timothy Hutton that same year.
Davis, who has appeared in nearly 100 film and television projects in the span of three decades, admits that her journey to stardom was no cakewalk: “I had a lot of doubt. I still have doubts. Every actor has doubts. I’m sure if you talked to Dame Streep or Dame Tyson, they’d have doubts, too,” she said.
Her words have the honesty and passion that Meryl Streep admires about Davis.
“Viola Davis is possessed. She is possessed to the blazing, incandescent power. She is arguably the most immediate, responsive artist I have ever worked with,” said Streep during the ceremony.
After years of playing supporting roles, Davis rose to leading-lady status as a loving maid in 2011’s The Help and became a household name for portraying a no-nonsense attorney in ABC’s hit series How to Get Away with Murder.
Davis should prepare to make room on her mantle for more trophies: she is the favorite to win the best-supporting-actress Golden Globe award on Sunday for her part in Fences, a role that landed her a Tony Award for the 2010 Broadway revival.