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Viola Davis · Filmography Ranked

Best Viola Davis Films, Ranked by IQ Score

Two decades of cinema's most-canonical Black-lead-actress catalog. Every Viola Davis film, ranked.

Viola Davis's filmography is the most-canonical post-2008 Black-lead-actress catalog. EGOT winner — Emmy (How to Get Away with Murder, 2015), Grammy (audiobook), Oscar (Fences, 2016), Tony (Fences stage 2010). Among the most-decorated performers in screen-acting history.

Anchor picks: Fences (2016) — Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020). Doubt (2008).

6 titles · ranked by IQ Score

  1. 1
    Ma Rainey's Black Bottom poster — IQ Score 166/200 — Masterclass tier

    Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

    Masterclass drama, music

    George C. Wolfe's 2020 August Wilson adaptation anchored by Viola Davis's Oscar-nominated performance as 1920s blues singer Ma Rainey and Chadwick Boseman's final film performance. The structural commitment to letting Wi…

    166/200
  2. 2
    Doubt poster — IQ Score 164/200 — Masterclass tier

    Doubt

    Masterclass drama

    John Patrick Shanley's 2008 self-adaptation of his Pulitzer-winning play anchored by Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman as a 1964 Bronx Catholic school principal accusing a young priest of child abuse. The structura…

    164/200
  3. 3
    Fences poster — IQ Score 160/200 — Masterclass tier

    Fences

    Masterclass drama

    2016 Best Picture nominee and Best Actor nominee (Denzel Washington). August Wilson's Pulitzer-winning play about a Black garbage collector and former baseball player in 1950s Pittsburgh. High cognitive demands from the…

    160/200
  4. 4
    Widows poster — IQ Score 160/200 — Masterclass tier

    Widows

    Masterclass thriller, drama, heist

    Steve McQueen's 2018 heist-thriller adapted from Lynda La Plante's 1983 ITV series. Viola Davis anchors the cast (Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo) as widows of dead Chicago criminals who must complet…

    160/200
  5. 5
    The Help poster — IQ Score 140/200 — Stimulating tier

    The Help

    Stimulating drama, historical

    2011 Best Picture nominee and Best Actress nominee. Black domestic workers in 1960s Mississippi tell their stories to a white journalist. Moderate cognitive demands. Educational value from the civil rights era setting, t…

    140/200
  6. 6
    How to Get Away with Murder poster — IQ Score 137/200 — Stimulating tier

    How to Get Away with Murder

    Stimulating crime, thriller

    Peter Nowalk's Shondaland legal thriller anchored by Viola Davis as criminal-defense professor Annalise Keating. The structural commitment — that the show's first season is built around a flash-forward of the central mur…

    137/200

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