Viola Davis Movies
A graduate of the Juilliard School, Viola Davis built an exceptional background in theater productions and has continued to perform on-stage throughout her television and film career. Making her feature-film debut in 1996 as a nurse in The Substance of Fire, she followed that up with several TV movies and guest-star appearances on dramatic series like Law & Order and NYPD Blue. She... (read more) went on to play another nurse in City of Angels, a hospital drama with a predominately African-American cast that didn't last long on CBS. She began collaborating with Steven Soderbergh for Out of Sight, and went on to star in two of the director's next few films, Traffic and Solaris. In 2001, she appeared in Kate and Leopold and in Oprah Winfrey's television presentation of Amy & Isabelle. The next year she played parts in both Far From Heaven and Denzel Washington's directorial debut, Antwone Fisher.
Davis continued to work steadily in a variety of notable projects including Steven Soderbergh's Solaris, Syriana, and played a notable part in the television movie biopic of American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino. However, in 2008 she landed the small but crucial role of the mother in John Patrick Shanley's adaptation of his award-winning play Doubt. Although her screen time is minimal, her indelible performance garnered her Best Supporting Actress nominations from the Hollywood Foreign Press, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Academy. Davis became a well known entity almost instantly, and was soon filling her docket with projects like 2009's State of Play, 2010's Knight and Day and Eat Pray Love, and an arc on the series United States of Tara.
Davis next appeared in the box office hit 2011 big screen adaptation of Kathryn Sockett 's period novel The Help, garnering still more praise as well as Best Actress nominations from the Academy, BAFTA, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Golden Globes, and the Screen Actors Guild. Her performance was still making waves when the critics began lauding her agian, this time for her role in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close that same year. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi
The Help
PG13 2011
A 1960s-era Mississippi debutante sends her community into an uproar by conducting a series of probing interviews with the black servants behind some of her community's most...
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
PG13 2011
Based on the novel by author Jonathan Safran Foer, director Stephen Daldry's post-9/11 drama follows the journey of a nine-year-old boy as he attempts to solve a family...
The United States of Tara: Season 02
2010
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It's Kind of a Funny Story
PG13 2010
Adapted from Ned Vizzini's 2006 novel, It's Kind of a Funny Story tells the story of burnt-out teenager Craig (Keir Gilchrist), who checks himself into a mental health...
Trust
R 2010
A family is devastated by a crime committed against a teenage girl in this drama. Annie (Liana Liberato) is 14 years old and growing up in a suburb of Chicago. Annie's...
Eat Pray Love
PG13 2010
A woman who once made it her goal in life to marry and rear a family finds her priorities suddenly shifting in Ryan Murphy and Jennifer Salt's adaptation of author...
Knight and Day
PG13 2010
A single girl en route to a family wedding gets swept up in a fight between a rogue government agent and the FBI in this globe-trotting action comedy from director James...
Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail
PG13 2009
Tyler Perry transitions another one of his hit plays to the big screen with this adaptation of Madea Goes to Jail. The successful filmmaker stars once again as the...
Law Abiding Citizen
R 2009
Jamie Foxx stars as an assistant DA who finds himself at the mercy of a spiteful vigilante (Gerard Butler) hell-bent on avenging the death of his wife and daughter, whose...
State of Play
PG13 2009
The Last King of Scotland director Kevin McDonald teams with screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan for this American adaptation of the hit British miniseries concerning...
Doubt
PG13 2008
When the principal (Meryl Streep) of a Bronx Catholic High School accuses a popular priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) of pedophilia, a young nun caught in between the feuding...
Nights in Rodanthe
PG13 2008
Adapted from author Nicholas Sparks' popular romance novel, director George C. Wolfe's Nights in Rodanthe tells the tale of a doctor (Richard Gere) en route to...
The Andromeda Strain
2008
Adapted from the best-selling novel by author Michael Crichton, director Mikael Salomon's made for television mini-series follows a group of specialized scientists as...
Traveler [TV Series]
2007
Another of the many serialized adventure shows created in the wake of such similar efforts as 24 and Lost, ABC's Traveler starred Matthew Bomerand and Logan...
Disturbia
PG13 2007
Salton Sea director D.J. Caruso travels from the shore to the suburbs for this suspenseful tale of a high-school senior who suspects that his neighbor is a notorious serial...
Jesse Stone: Sea Change
2007
The fourth installment of the Jesse Stone series finds restless New England police chief Stone (Tom Selleck) fighting boredom by attempting to solve a twelve year-old...
Jesse Stone: Night Passage
2006
Tom Selleck returns to the role of small-town police chief Jesse Stone in this prequel to the CBS TV movie Stone Cold. Having been booted from the LAPD for drunkenness...
The Architect
R 2006
Tonya Neely (Viola Davis) is a neighborhood activist on the south side of Chicago, trying to get her community to rally to tear down Eden Court, the dangerous housing...
World Trade Center
PG13 2006
Director Oliver Stone once again offers a powerful and provocative story based on real-life events in this drama. Sargeant John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and {%William...
The Fantasia Barrino Story: Life Is Not a Fairy Tale
2006
Fantasia stars as herself in this music-filled biopic chronicling the struggles and obstacles she had to overcome, including being a young single mother, before she achieved...