Viola Davis is no stranger to television, having appeared in episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Traveler and United States of Tara. It wasn't until she was cast as the lead in ABC's How to Get Away With Murder, however, that the 49-year-old actress began to receive the acclaim she deserved.
Davis had worked with some of the biggest directors and actors in Hollywood on stage and screen, but many times, she felt marginalized as a nonwhite actor in film. When Shonda Rhimes and Peter Norwalk came calling, the star jumped at the chance to play a mysterious law professor named Annalise Keating. Davis said in The Hollywood Reporter's Drama Actresses Roundtable issue,
"There was absolutely no precedent for it. I had never seen a 49-year-old, dark-skinned woman who is not a size 2 be a sexualized role in TV or film. I'm a sexual woman, but nothing in my career has ever identified me as a sexualized woman. I was the prototype of the 'mommified" role."??
