Viola Davis is nothing like any of her characters, at least when she's talking. But she listens the way they do: intently, actively, letting you know all the things she's thinking. By communicating as much through her silences as her dialogue, she's able to create hard-ass characters in brutal situations whom you don't pity but instead understand. She used that skill as the steely mother in 2008's Doubt , turning one scene opposite Meryl Streep into an Oscar nomination. She did it on Broadway last year as the reticent wife in August Wilson's Fences , winning a Tony and outshining her co-star Denzel...
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