Add yet another honor to Viola Davis’ long list of accolades.
On Sunday, the acclaimed actor became the 18th EGOT winner when she earned a Grammy Award in the audio book, narration and storytelling recording category. Davis was nominated for narrating the audio versions of her 2022 memoir, “Finding Me.”
EGOT status, most recently achieved in 2021 by Jennifer Hudson, indicates a person has won at least one of each of the “big four” awards: Emmy (television), Grammy (recording arts), Oscar (film) and Tony (stage). Sunday’s Grammy sealed the deal for the “The Woman King” actor-producer.
The 57-year-old performer won her Emmy the first of the five times she’s been nominated, in 2015, for lead actress in a drama series, “How to Get Away With Murder.” The four-time Academy Award nominee won the supporting actress Oscar in 2017 for “Fences.” The Tony for best actress in a play came years earlier, in 2010, for the stage version of playwright August Wilson’s “Fences.”
Davis was up for Sunday’s Grammy against fellow nominees Jamie Foxx (“Act Like You Got Some Sense”), Mel Brooks (“All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business by Mel Brooks”), Lin-Manuel Miranda (“Aristotle and Dante Dive Into the Waters of the World”) and Questlove (“Music Is History”).
In addition to Hudson, the other EGOT winners are — in reverse chronological order — Alan Mencken, John Legend, Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Robert Lopez, Scott Rudin, Whoopi Goldberg, Mike Nichols, Mel Brooks, Jonathan Tunick, Marvin Hamlisch, Audrey Hepburn, John Gielgud, Rita Moreno, Helen Hayes and Richard Rodgers.
Other entertainers — including Barbra Streisand and Harry Belafonte — have won all four awards, but at least one of them was in a non-competitive category (such as special or honorary).
Legend was the youngest person to log all four awards (when he was 39); Gielgud (who did it at 87) was the oldest.
Later in 2023, Davis will appear in the movies “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” (as Dr. Volumnia Gaul) and “Air,” in which she plays Michael Jordan’s mom, Deloris.
