Viola Davis achieves EGOT status at Grammys 2023 but what is an EGOT and who else has won?

Viola Davis officially achieved EGOT status at the 2023 Grammys. While viewers often focus on musicians at the Grammys, Davis completed her collection by winning best audio book for her autobiography Finding Me.

Davis is only the 18th person to ever achieve the status which includes an artist winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Award for work throughout their career. During her acceptance speech, Davis said: "I wrote this book to honour the six-year-old Viola. To honour her life, her joy, her trauma, everything. And it has just been such a journey – I just EGOT!”

The star won the best supporting actress Oscar in 2016 for Fences. She received an Emmy Award in 2015 for her work on How to Get Away with Murder, and she has two Tony Awards for her theatre work including featured actress in a play for King Hedley II (2001) and lead actress in a play for Fences (2010).

Davis has gone from strength to strength in her career as an actor and a producer. In 2022, she produced and starred in the critically acclaimed historical drama The Woman King. Outside of the screen, Davis is also widely recognized for her advocacy and support of human rights and equal rights for women and women of colour.

The EGOT acronym was coined by actor Philip Michael Thomas in late 1984, when his role on the new hit show Miami Vice brought him instant fame, and he stated a desire to achieve the EGOT within five years. The first EGOT was achieved by Richard Rodgers in 1962.

So, who are the other 17 artists who have managed to achieve EGOT status? Here’s the full list of winners.

Who has won an EGOT?

Here is the full list of actors who have achieved EGOT status and when they achieved it:

• Richard Rodgers (1962)

• Helen Hayes (1977)

• Rita Morena (1977)

• John Gielgud (1991)

• Audrey Hepburn (1994)

• Marvin Hamlisch (1995)

• Jonathan Tunick (1997)

• Mel Brooks (2001)

• Mike Nichols (2001)

• Whoopi Goldberg (2002)

• Scott Rudin (2012)

• Robert Lopez (2014)

• Andrew Lloyd Webber (2018)

• Tim Rice (2018)

• John Legend (2018)

• Alan Menken (2020)

• Jennifer Hudson (2022)

• Viola Davis (2023)