Viola Davis has officially achieved EGOT status after her Grammy win yesterday. The actress is the 18th person to achieve the honour. EGOT is an acronym for the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards - and the title is given to outstanding performers who have won all four awards.
On Sunday, the 57-year-old actor accepted her very first Grammy Award for her performance of the audiobook for her memoir Finding Me at the Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony. During her acceptance speech she gushed, 'It has just been such a journey. I just EGOT!' This was met with applause from the audience.
She continued, 'I wrote this book to honour the six-year-old Viola. To honour her life, her joy, her trauma, everything.' Viola also became visibly emotional as she thanked her family for being the 'best chapter of her life.'
Viola's Emmy Award recognised her performance as Annalise Keating in the TV drama How To Get Away With Murder. She has two Tony Awards for her theatre work - featured actress in a play for King Hedley II (2001) and lead actress in a play for Fences (2010). The star also won the best supporting actress Oscar in 2016 for her outstanding performance as housewife Rose Maxson in Fences.
She also makes history as becoming only the third Black woman in history to earn the honour - alongside Whoopi Goldberg and Jennifer Hudson. The 17 other EGOT winners include Sir John Gielgud, Rita Moreno, Andrew Lloyd Webber, John Legend and Jennifer Hudson.
In response to her legendary win, fans went wild on social media and celebrated her milestone. On Twitter one fan wrote, 'I just witnessed history with [Viola Davis] joining the illustrious #EGOT family!' Whilst another expressed how deserving she was of this moment commenting, 'This was a long time coming and so deserved. Go Viola!.'
Reflecting on her illustrious career and Grammy nod with the Recording Academy, Viola said achieving EGOT status would be a 'huge accomplishment.' She said, 'I think that everybody wants their life to mean something,' she said. '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.'
She added, 'A lot of people don’t know how to do that. 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.'