Viola Davis names her favourite movies of all time
For her powerful dramatic performance and magnetising screen presence, American actor Viola Davis is rightfully known as one of the greatest performers working in contemporary Hollywood, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Joaquin Phoenix, Tilda Swinton and Michelle Williams. Often at the very top of filmmaker’s wishlists, Davis has already collaborated with the likes of Steven Soderbergh, Todd Haynes, Denis Villeneuve, Michael Mann and many more.
Only coming to industry prominence at the end of the 1990s, Davis has worked tirelessly to get to the very pinnacle of Hollywood. The independent filmmaker Steven Soderbergh was the first to truly buy into Davis as a performer, hiring her talents for her first major movie role in 1998’s Out of Sight, where she would appear alongside George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez and Ving Rhames.
Impressed by her powerful command in front of the camera, the filmmaker later worked with her again for 2000’s Traffic and Ocean’s Eleven one year later, where she played a minor role, but by that time, she’s already caught the industry’s attention.
“What I learned from him is to relax and to just be,” she said of Soderbergh during the 2012 Santa Barbara Film Festival, “It’s that seamlessness that happens in life…He’s always so calm that it makes you relax”. Davis would work with Soderbergh one last time in 2002 during his adaptation of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris before she found success in wider Hollywood, rising to popularity following her Oscar-nominated performance in 2008’s Doubt.
Ever since, Davis has become an icon of modern Hollywood, appearing on the red carpet for 2023’s Air, where she discussed her four favourite movies of all time with Letterboxd.
The movie often donned ‘the greatest of all time, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, is the first film on her list, with the iconic story of the flawed American dream following the life of a famous tycoon whose last words are meticulously analysed. Despite its critical reverence, Citizen Kane didn’t actually see much Oscar success, winning ‘Best Original Screenplay’ whilst being given only a nomination for ‘Best Picture’.
The 1975 Michael Schultz romantic drama Cooley High is the second movie to grace her list, a culturally significant film that is set in the Near-North Side of Chicago in 1964. Starring the likes of Glynn Turman, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and Garrett Morris, the film tells the story of four high school students and best friends whose aspiring lives take a tragic turn after a series of misdemeanours.
Starring Donald Sutherland, Jane Fonda and Roy Scheider, the third flick on Davis’ list is the 1971 Alan J. Pakula film Klute. The first instalment in the director’s ‘paranoia’ trilogy, which later included 1974’s The Parallax View and 1976’s All the President’s Men. Telling the story of a small-town detective on the search of a missing man whose only connection is a New York prostitute, Klute is a classic of ‘70s cinema.
Bookending her list is the 1994 New Zealand crime movie Once Were Warriors by director Lee Tamahori. A brutally violent emotional drama, the film follows a family descended from Maori warriors who are scarred by the evil of their father. “Oh that’s a good one,” Davis simply says of the movie, which is by no means an easy watch, challenging the audience to a tempestuous ride.
Viola Davis’ favourite movies:
- Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
- Cooley High (Michael Schultz, 1975)
- Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971)
- Once Were Warriors (Lee Tamahori, 1994)
