Viola Davis has officially joined the EGOT club, a prestigious group of entertainers who have won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards.
The Oscar-winning actress achieved the feat on Sunday, winning a Grammy for Best Audio Book, Narration, and Storytelling Recording for her memoir Finding Me.
Davis becomes the third Black woman to reach EGOT status, following Whoopi Goldberg and Jennifer Hudson, and the 18th person overall to have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award.
Davis won Tony Awards in 2001 and 2010, the first for Best Featured Actress In A Play for her performance in King Hedley II, before winning again in 2010 for Best Leading Actress in A Play for Fences. In 2015, she won an Emmy for her role in How To Get Away With Murder, before earning an Oscar in 2017 after starring alongside Denzel Washington in the movie adaption of Fences.
“I think that everybody wants their life to mean something,” Davis said in an interview with the Grammys in January. “I believe in the Cherokee birth blessing, which is, ‘May you live long enough to know why you were born.’ I do believe that you literally wanna blow a hole through this world in whatever way you can.
“A lot of people don’t know how to do that,” she added. “A lot of people haven’t found that thing that they’re passionate about, that they can do. Some have. But we all are looking for that, blowing a hole through this earth before we leave it. I think about that in my work a lot. I really found that thing that I love to do. So I always wanna make it meaningful.”
