Oscars 2009: Meet the Nominees You've Never Heard Of

1. VIOLA DAVIS 
Best Supporting Actress Nominee
Doubt

She might win an Oscar for … her 11 minutes onscreen opposite Meryl Streep in Doubt. Davis plays Mrs. Miller, the mother of a young altar boy named Donald. When his school principal, Sister Aloysius (Streep), tells her that Donald may be the victim of molestation at the hands of his priest Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Mrs. Miller has her doubts. She sees Flynn as his friend and protector amidst classmates that torment him as the only black child in an all-white Catholic school. Now she must choose whether to investigate the allegations or leave things be until Donald moves on to high school, the following year.
 
She holds her own … with critics like Peter Howell at the Toronto Star who says, “The film's most notable performance comes in the brief scenes where Davis' anxious Mrs. Miller grapples with the suggestion that her son is at risk from a man he admires, one who has helped him through difficult times. Anxiety twists her face as she weighs unproven risk against proven virtue. The words of the film's opening sermon by Flynn seize her, as they do us: ‘What do you do when you're not sure?’”

You should know that … growing up, she was a small-town girl with big-city dreams. Born in South Carolina and raised in Rhode Island, she overcame poverty to see her star rise higher than even she could imagine. "I felt that being an actor was a silly dream for a shy, poor, black girl from Central Falls, Rhode Island," she told trioprograms.org. "Everyone I saw on television, in film or at the theater did not look like me!"

Her father struggled to make ends meet as a groomer and trainer at the local race track, but Davis didn’t give up hope. "I am not ashamed to say we grew up in abject poverty in a predominantly white community,” she told the Observer. “Our housing situation was not desirable -- the plumbing did not work and we were infested with vermin. But it was a ripe ground for an artist to navigate emotionally." Luckily her parents strongly encouraged education and it was through the Upward Bound educational camp that she found her way.

While at UB Davis met her first acting coach Ron Stetson who pushed her to pursue her dreams and persuaded her to enroll at Rhode Island College, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Theater. Soon after, she moved to New York and joined Julliard School of the Performing Arts, where she graduated in 1994.
"You're kind of in an incubator in acting school," she told the Los Angeles Times. "I didn't think I was any different from the Caucasian actresses. I thought if they could play Nora in A Doll's House, I could, that people will consider me the same way they consider them."

Davis pressed on and over the past 15 years has honed her acting and slowly built a career through television, film and stage work. In 1996 she landed her first onscreen role in the film Substance of Fire while garnishing rave reviews for her Broadway performance in Seven Guitars. Steven Soderbergh took notice of her talent, casting her in three of his flicks including Out of Sight, Traffic and Solaris. A Tony Award for her work in King Hedley II in 2001 and an Independent Spirit Award nomination for her role in Antwone Fisher opposite Denzel Washington in 2002, put her on the map.

Now Davis is enjoying the fruits of her labor thanks to her latest role in Doubt. With a Breakthrough Award from the National Board of Review, the Virtuoso Award from the Santa Barbara Film Festival, and nominations from both the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild, an Oscar nod for for Best Supporting Actress is just the icing on the cake.

“I never imagined winning an Oscar. A Tony Award yes … not an Oscar. That was almost too big for me. But I imagine it now!”

She confesses … “I did not sleep one wink,” she told Flickers of filming with Streep. “I got up. I looked at the script. I paced, lay back down, got up, paced some more. You can’t suck with Meryl Streep. If you do, she’ll eat you alive. Not intentionally -- she’s a beautiful person -- but she’s going to come at the top of her game. No, you don’t sleep.”

She’s unstoppable … with her new role as a social worker named Ellen in Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail. “There was a woman at my dad’s funeral and she prophesied for people,” Davis told the Hollywood Interview. “She took my hand and she said, ‘Tyler Perry is going to offer you a movie, and do not turn it down.’ I was thinking, ‘Of all the things you could have said to me [laughs]. You could have told me that one day I’m going to see God, and you told me that Tyler Perry is going to offer me a movie.’ And sure enough, two years later, Tyler Perry offered me a role in a movie. I didn’t turn it down.”