Hollywood actor-producer Viola Davis, who currently stars as Michelle Obama in Showtime's The First Lady, is set to receive the Kering Women in Motion Award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Viola Davis will be in motion in Cannes on May 22, making her way to the stage to pick up Kering’s Women in Motion Award. In announcing Davis as this year’s recipient, Kering and Cannes praised her “activism and achievements” while noting that she has been a passionate advocate for the rights of women and minorities and has “regularly called for greater inclusion in the film industry and campaigned for gender equality.” This record makes her the only African American actress to have received so many nominations and awards for her roles in theater, television and film, it went on to point out.
“Her talent, hard work, choice of roles and the way she interprets them have earned her the very highest recognitions in the film industry,” the award’s organizers said in a statement. It noted that Davis “is one of the few Hollywood personalities to have won a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, four SAG Awards, and what Hollywood calls the Triple Crown of Acting: two Tony Awards, an Oscar and an Emmy, for her roles in the stage play “King Hedley II,” in “Fences” and its remarkable film adaptation, and in the TV series “How to Get Away with Murder.”
The black-tie event, a partnership between Kering and the Cannes Film Festival, has been singling out top female stars since it launched in 2015. Previous recipients of this award include Jane Fonda, Geena Davis, Susan Sarandon, Isabelle Huppert, Patty Jenkins, Gong Li and Salma Hayek. Kering chairman and CEO François-Henri Pinault, Cannes Film Festival president Pierre Lescure and fest executive director Thierry Frémaux are confirmed to present the award to Davis during the official Women In Motion dinner in Cannes on Sunday, May 22.
On the work front, Viola Davis currently stars as Michelle Obama in the Showtime series The First Lady. She recently published a memoir called Finding Me, which she wrote over the lockdown., that recounts her childhood experiences in an underprivileged environment in Saint Matthews, S.C.
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