Article taken from Variety.
Oscar winnerViola Daviswill receive the Icon Award from the African American Film Critics Assn. during the 12th annualAAFCAawards on April 7.
Previous recipients of AAFCAs Icon Award are Sidney Poitier and Kenya Barris.
Announcing the honor, AAFCA president Gil Robertson said: Viola Davis has excelled in every single format available to an actor. Shes a powerhouse actress who continues to impress with her incredible range and ability to lend herself to any era and dig deep into the humanity of every character she plays.
When you think about her in Doubt,The Help, Fences and now Ma Raineys Black Bottom, she just goes there, he continued. Following in the footsteps of other legendary actresses by becoming an advocate for social justice issues and taking additional steps of creating the images that we see by producing, she has firmly established herself as a true artist.
Davis is one of the most celebrated actresses in Hollywood history. She won the best supporting actress Oscar in 2017 for her work in Fences. In 2015, Davis made history with her lead actress in a drama Emmy win for How to Get Away with Murder and has two Tony awards, for Fences and King Hedley II. Davis was also nominated for Academy Awards for her work in The Help and Doubt.
In Aug. 2020, Davis accepted the best actress award during AAFCAs TV honors for the final season of How to Get Away with Murder.
Netflixs Ma Raineys Black Bottom in which Davis stars as Ma Rainey, the Mother of the Blues was named one of the ten best films of the 2020 by AAFCAs members.
The common theme with all of our Top 10 Films this year is the grace of humanity, Robertson said of the list. All of these films spotlighted different circumstances that put the human spirit to a test.
The late Chadwick Boseman, Davis co-star in the film adaptation of August Wilsons play, will also be honored during the virtual ceremony, posthumously awarded the best actor prize.
The films director George C. Wolfe is set to receive the Salute to Excellence Award, as one of the events special achievement honorees alongside Mariah Carey, All In: The Fight for Democracy producer Stacey Abrams and filmmakers Lisa Corts and Liz Garbus and Netflix.