Viola Davis

In 2003, Viola Davis married the actor Julius Tennon.

In October 2011, the couple adopted a girl who was named Genesis. The couple also has a son and a daughter who were born from Tennon's previous marriage.

Viola Davis was born on August 11, 1965 at her grandparents’ home in St. Matthews, South Carolina.

Her father, Dan Davis, was a horse trainer and mother, Mary Alice, was a maid and factory worker besides been a civil rights activist. The actress is the second youngest child of her parents’ six children.

Two months after Davis was born, the family moved to Rhode Island taking her and two of her sisters along and leaving her older brother and sister with her grandparents.

Her parents’ income was insufficient to support the family. They lived in abject poverty in rat-infested apartments and endured occasional food shortages.

At the age of two, Davis along with her mother was taken to jail after the latter was arrested during a protest.

In 1996, Viola Davis made her Broadway debut in ‘Seven Guitars’. In this play, she played the role of a musician. The same year, she appeared as a nurse in ‘The Substance of Fire’. This drama was her screen debut for which she got her Screen Actors Guild card.

In 1998, she played a small role in Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Out of Sight’.

In 2001, she appeared as a mother who fights for the right to abort a pregnancy in the play ‘King Hedley II’. Davis was awarded the Tony Award for this Broadway play.

Davis also did many television series. One of her most notable roles was of a serial killer in the television show ‘Law & Order: Criminal Intent’ episode named ‘Badge’.

In 2002, this African-American beauty caught the attention of critics when she appeared in ‘Antwone Fisher’. In this film, she hardly had any lines, yet her presence was noticeable.

In 2008, Viola Davis’ nuanced performance in ‘Doubt’ made her acting career achieve new heights. Her character of ‘Mrs. Miller’ made a tremendous impression with such a small role.

In the film adaption of Kathryn Stockett’s book ‘The Help,’ the star appeared as the maid who gets interviewed by a white writer for a book. This role resembled the real-lives of her mother and grandmother – typical African women working in cotton and tobacco fields and cleaning other people’s homes.