Golden Globes name Viola Davis next recipient of Cecil B. DeMille Award

Viola Davis in a black dress

Viola Davis arrives at the LACMA Art+Film Gala earlier this month.
(Richard Shotwell / Invision / AP)

EGOT winner Viola Davis has been selected as the Golden Globes’ 2025 Cecil B. DeMille Award honoree, a career award that will be handed out at a gala dinner at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Jan. 3.

Davis will be joined by the winner of the Carol Burnett Award honoring television achievements, which has yet to be announced. It’s the first time the group has spun off the prizes into a separate evening. The winners will be acknowledged during the main Globes ceremony, set for Jan. 5 and televised on CBS and Paramount+.

Davis won an Oscar in 2017 for playing the long-suffering wife opposite Denzel Washington in the film adaptation of August Wilson’s “Fences.” She also earned Oscar nominations for “The Help,” “Doubt” and, most recently, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” another Wilson adaptation.

Davis became the first Black woman to win an Emmy for lead actress in a drama series in 2015 for her work in “How to Get Away with Murder.” She has won two Tony Awards,” one for “Fences,” the other for playing Tonya in “King Hedley II.” Her Grammy came in 2023 for narrating her memoir, “Finding Me.”

She has been married to her husband, Julius Tennon, since 2003.

“Being on top is a grind,” Davis told The Times in 2022. “Everyone wants to be on top. That’s the whole goal. ‘I want to be Cate Blanchett. I want to be Meryl Streep.’ It’s a sacrifice. If anyone were to ask me what my life was, I would say, ‘[Daughter] Genesis, Julius, my mom.’ They’re my heartbeat.”

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